Gender Perspective in Fisheries: Examples from the South and the North: Analysis and Practice

International audienceWomen have an active role in fisheries and aquaculture all over the world where fisheries activities related to resources, like fish, shell, and seaweed, take place. Women’s participation in fisheries is diverse as they are involved in different ways depending on the cultural, social, and material conditions. In Western areas, women’s contribution has mostly been performed on land, while in Southern areas, more examples of women fishing or collecting shells are found. However, everywhere, women in fisheries have either fewer rights than men or completely lack formal rights and political attention. Knowledge about women’s roles, gender relations, women’s ways of life in fishing areas, and the changes women and men face, is scarce and varied but necessary in order to conduct transdisciplinary research. Studies within social and cultural fishery research, most often carried out by means of qualitative methods, try to get deeper into women’s lives, their actions or practices, identities, their relations with men, and how women and men as categories are constructed, most often within a specific timespan and places. Constructing gender and gender relations differs from gender as a variable in the fields of fisheries and aquaculture. Both approaches are applied, but highlight different aspects and gender issues in fishery-related societies. An integrated gender dimension in transdisciplinary approaches is necessary to achieve sustainability of resources and society, by bringing together scientists working on different areas and different stakeholders to find responses to major problems

Governance interactions in small-scale fisheries market chains: Examples from the Asia-Pacific

Small-scale fisheries are subject to various governing institutions operating at different levels with different objectives. At the same time, small-scale fisheries increasingly form part of domestic and international market chains, with consequent effects for marine environments and livelihoods of the fishery-dependent. Yet there remains a need to better understand how small-scale fisheries market chains interact with the range of governance institutions that influence them. In this paper, we examine how multiple governance systems function along market chains, in order to identify opportunities for improved multiscale governance. We use three small-scale fisheries with varying local to global market chains operating in the Asia-Pacific region to develop a framework for analysis. Drawing from Interactive Governance theory we identify governing systems that have come to operate at particular sections in each market chain. We recognize four institutions that shape the governance over the length of the chain; namely those centred on (a) government, (b) private sector and pricing, (c) decentralized multistakeholder management and (d) culture and social relations. The framework shows how diverse arrangements of these governing institutions emerge and take effect along market chains. In doing so, we seek to move away from prescribed ideals of universal governing arrangements for fisheries and their market chains, and instead illuminate how governing systems function interactively across multiple scales