The 8th Global Conference on Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries (GAF8) was to have been held in April 2021 but, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is postponed to a later date (to be advised). In preparation for GAF8 the Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section of the Asian Fisheries Society (GAFS) is joining with...

Are you confused about what it means to talk about “equality” or “gender equality”? In this current socially enlightened age when equality and inclusion are commonly routine words in strategies, conventions, goals and other high-level pronouncements, everyone from graphic designers to legal scholars seems to be having a go at explaining what...

The recently completed project, USAID Oceans and Fisheries Partnership (USAID Oceans: 2015-2020) had human welfare and gender (HWGE) in fisheries as one of its workstreams, along with technology development for an electronic Catch Documentation and Traceability system (eCDT), Ecosystems Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM), Public-Private Partnership (PPP) and Regional Collaboration.

We are pleased to release the latest annual E-Newsletter of the Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section (GAFS) of the Asian Fisheries Society. The E-Newsletter Editor, Surendran Rajaratnam pointed out that as he wrote his introduction, “people around the world have already endured weeks of social and economic restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the Pacific, the ocean is home. It connects social and cultural life, while providing key resources such as food and economic benefits, as well as connecting infrastructure and leisure opportunities. The Pacific’s richness in culturally enshrined lifestyles, its vast diversity of Polynesian, Micronesian and Melanesian traditions and its co-existence with...

Gender experts from across the globe have sought out scarce sets of sex-disaggregated data for the Illuminating Hidden Harvests initiative, ensuring that both women’s and men’s contributions to small-scale fisheries are seen. Just as data tells stories, so too does missing data. In fisheries, the lack of sex-disaggregated data is a story in itself,” said Dr. Jennifer Lee Johnson, an anthropologist with Purdue University.

Despite evidence of women’s contribution to the sustainability of fisheries worldwide, their roles in fisheries remain poorly understood and most often unrecognized altogether. The main hurdle in assessing women’s contribution is the lack of gender disaggregated data in fisheries, a well understood and nearly universal impediment to understanding women’s participation.

Women work in all stages of the fish value chain, producing, processing and selling fish and through their work support the economy, their households, and communities in rural and coastal regions. They are said to make up half the fisheries workforce, yet their work goes unrecognized in most official Read more about Latest special issue of Gender, Technology & Development examines new learnings on women and fisheries ...

Over a decade ago I started working with fisheries data and noticed that much was missing from the official statistics that are often the basis for fisheries management and policy. My work at that time, as a research assistant for the Sea Around Us initiative, focused on fisheries catch data, where small-scale fisheries were found to be grossly under-reported, with certain species completely overlooked and large amounts of discarded bycatch, mostly from industrial scale fisheries, missing from the data.

Small-scale fisheries are recognised for the important opportunities they provide in terms of livelihoods and food and nutrition security. Women, men, the young and elderly, are engaged in different aspects of fisheries value chains, from assisting with preparations for fishing trips to fishing and gleaning, through to processing and marketing the resulting catch. At a household level, fishers harvest fish which can be consumed at home, or barter, exchange or sell the fish generating goodwill or income which can be used to acquire other foods.

Social relations are important in small-scale fisheries value chains. This study addresses the question of how social relations affect engagement and outcomes of women who participate in the fish value chains. The social relations approach was useful to the study as it helped in understanding the social relations within the household and between the actors in the fish value chains.