On 27 December 2012, we lost Dr M.C. Nandeesha, who brought awareness to the importance of women in Asian and global fisheries, and who initiated the first substantive activities to address gender inequality to the work and the considerations of the Asian Fisheries Society. Beginning with the 1990 Women in Fisheries in India Workshop, held...

COP20, the UN climate conference is now underway in Lima, Peru (20th session of the Conference of the Parties and the 10th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol). Concerted efforts are being made to engender the new climate agreement that the countries are...

The November 2014 edition of Samudra Report, the global periodical on fisheries issues published by the International in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF), highlighted the 5th Global Symposium on Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries (GAF5) in its article “Still a Long Way to Go.” The article, by Katia Frangoudes and Shuddhawati Peke, give an overview of GAF5...

The Secretariat for the Pacific Community (SPC), has just released its 25th Women in Fisheries Information Bulletin. Congratulations to the SPC, Bulletin Editors including current editor Dr Veikila Vuki, donors and supporters for this achievement. This issue starts with a message of support from Moses Amos, the new Director of SPC’s Fisheries, Aquaculture and Marine Ecosystems...

The August 2014 issue of Yemaya, the newsletter on gender and fisheries of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) is full of interesting articles. It highlights the gender implications of the new Small Scale Fisheries Guidelines, plus articles on Japan, India and The Gambia. Download the issue at this link. Articles Editorial: Nilanjana...

In earlier posts on this site, we highlighted papers arising from the work of Danika Kleiber and her colleagues on gender in the Northern Bohol section of the Danajon Bank in the Central Philippines and on a global overview of gender in small scale fisheries. With pleasure, we draw your attention to Danika’s doctoral thesis, recently ...

Voice and Agency: Empowering women and girls for shared prosperity In his Foreword to this strong, empirical book recently released by the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank Group President and himself a physician and anthropologist, says: “Our flagship World Development Report 2012 demonstrated that gender equality and economic development are inextricably linked.

More development research institute leaders, researchers and project developers are aware of the importance of gender equality in programs and project activities. Some have made public commitments to action through their work. Often, however, these good intentions are thwarted by lack of knowledge and expertise on how to go about it. Of course, in an...

Many agencies and projects find themselves in the same situation as the Bay of Bengal Large Marine Ecosystem project (BOBLME), which realised that it had not taken gender into account in formulating its strategies and project priorities. To overcome this gap, BOBLME undertook an ex post analysis of the gender dimension of their work and...

We are pleased to highlight this recent Indian technology award to a team of largely women professionals. Congratulations to Dr Leela Edwin, Dr Nikita Gopal and Dr Meenakumari and their colleagues! CIFT Press Release, July 2014 A team of researchers from the Central Institute of Fisheries Technology (CIFT), Kochi, received the 4th National Awards for...

A new CGIAR report, “Bangladesh small and medium-scale aquaculture value chain development: Past trends, current status and likely future directions” by Niaz Ahmed Apu reviews a wealth of recent information and and also endeavours to do justice to available knowledge on the contributions and opportunities for women in the value chains. Gendered knowledge is still Read more about Bangladesh aquaculture value chain analysis...

In a recent publication in the journal Feminist Economics, “Fishing Na Everybody Business”: Women’s Work and Gender Relations in Sierra Leone’s Fisheries, Andy Thorpe and co-authors take three sets of data (from the National Frame Surveys of the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources, a survey of women fish processors by the Institute of Marine Biology...

Dr. B. Shanthi, Principal Scientist (Home Science), and team, Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture (CIBA), Chennai (India), recently won the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) Award for Outstanding Interdisciplinary Team Research in Agricultural and Allied Sciences – 2011-12, for work done under the Department of Bio-Technology funded project on Diversification of Livelihoods among Women...

A new report, Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture for Food Security and Nutrition, has provided probably “the most comprehensive recent attempt to review and synthesize the current knowledge” said Dr Christophe Béné. Dr Béné, of the Institute of Development Studies, chaired the team of the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) on Food Security and Nutrition of...

A new report from the World Bank provides practical and strong arguments for making gender equality explicit in the workplace. The report also continually makes the case that gender equality in the world of work is a win-win on many fronts. The new report accompanies two World Development reports from the World Bank: 2012 World...

From sardines and mackerels to cockles and oysters, the fisheries and fish processing activities of the Republic of the Gambia in West Africa are important to people and to the economy. A new report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), called “The fisheries sector in the Gambia: trade, value addition and social inclusiveness, with...

Yemaya, the gender and fisheries newsletter of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) has recently released its April 2014 issue. This issue, Yemaya has a special focus on the progress and shortcomings of the coverage of women’s equity strategies in the forthcoming Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale fisheries in the Context of Food Security ...

A new Norad report by Cecile Brugere and Bodil Maal has delved into gender roles in the fisheries and aquaculture value chains in Mozambique, finding that women play a large role in the fisheries value chain, but their social organization is not strong. Women dominate aquaculture production but the aquaculture value chain is still only...

With deep concern we report that Dr Chandrika Sharma, the Executive Secretary of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, is one of the passengers on the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 that went missing on early Saturday morning. Chandrika and ICSF are great stalwarts of the struggle for fishworkers rights including the rights of women...

Barbara Neis, Siri Gerrard and Nicole G. Power have written a reflective paper on the social-ecological systems of cod (Gadus morhua) fisheries in Atlantic Canada and Norway. Their study revealed similarities but also many differences between the ways small scale fishing communities in the two countries have reacted to changes in the fish stocks and ...

Women’s as well as men’s fishing should be taken into account in marine ecology assessments, according to the recent global review, “Gender and small-scale fisheries: a case for counting women and beyond“, by Danika Kleiber, Leila Harris and Amanda Vincent. Typically, they point out, women’s participation is only considered from a social perspective. After reviewing ...

Danika Kleiber and her co-authors have made a welcome contribution to the information on total fisheries harvest and the often un-recorded harvests of women and men, especially by reef gleaning. Working with local communities who live and work on the reefs on Danajon Bank, Bohol Province Central Philippines, and 4 Cebuano-speaking research assistants (see photo), they ...

One of the biggest challenges for achieving gender equality is educating the present generation of leaders, project managers and other experts on the basic concepts and how they apply in daily work. Dr Anne Coles, a gender expert with extensive experience of research in migration, gender, development and social change, and also in delivering in-service ...

In 2013, the Genderaquafish website continued to develop as a global source of information sharing and news. Compared to 2012, the number of visitors grew by 16%, to over 17,000 for the year. The visitors came from even more countries than last year (163 countries, compared to 154 countries in 2012). The top 5 countries of our ...