The need to uncover, interrogate, and integrate women’s contributions to fisheries in research and development has never been clearer. As coastal and fisheries management continues to look to the Sustainable Development Goals and the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication, as frameworks and mandates, gender equity and equality have become a central concern.
To fill the still existing gap of documentation and theoretical engagement, in this thematic collection, the authors have gathered together voices from researchers and practitioners from around the world, with one overarching common approach of using a gender lens to examine the relationship between humans and aquatic resources. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s classic feminist concept of situated knowledges, they examine the many and varied approaches researchers are using to engage with the intersection of gender and fisheries.
Beginning and ending with two reviews that examine where gender and fisheries has come from, and where it is going, this thematic issue includes case studies from 10 countries, engaging in the topic at various scales (individual, household, national, institutional etc.), and using multiple methodological approaches.
Taken together, these pieces explore the mechanism by which women’s contribution to fisheries are overlooked and provide direct evidence to contest the persistent invisibility of women in fishing, fisheries labor, and fisheries decision-making. Going beyond the evidence of women’s contributions, the authors go further to examine different coastal contexts, intersectional identities such as age, and explore gender transformative approaches to fisheries development.
The two issues of this thematic collection have been supported by the Too Big To Ignore project and its cluster ‘Women & Gender in Fisheries‘ (the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant #895-2011-1011) and the Working Group “Gendered Seas” of Ocean Past Platform (OPP) IS1403 COST Action, of European Cooperation in Sciences & Technology.
Articles
Situated transformations of women and gender relations in small-scale fisheries and communities in a globalized world
Frangoudes, Katia, Siri Gerrard and Danika Kleiber
Innovative and traditional actions: women’s contribution to sustainable coastal households and communities: examples from Peru and Japan
Delaney, Alyne Elizabeth, Milena Arias Schreiber, and Joanna Alfaro-Shigueto
Women’s engagement in and outcomes from small-scale fisheries value chains in Malawi: effects of social relations
Managing Mercado del Mar: a case of women’s entrepreneurship in the fishing industry
Competing for kayabo: gendered struggles for fish and livelihood on the shore of Lake Victoria
From household business to shareholding companies—impacts on gender relations and influence in fisheries and fish farming in northern Norway
Fisheries women groups in Japan: a shift from well-being to entrepreneurship
Kumi Soejima and Katia Frangoudes
Gender norms and relations: implications for agency in coastal livelihoods
Enhancing coastal livelihoods in Indonesia: an evaluation of recent initiatives on gender, women and sustainable livelihoods in small-scale fisheries
Women’s empowerment, collective actions, and sustainable fisheries: lessons from Mexico