Gleaning: beyond the subsistence narrative

Coastal resources are important for the wellbeing and livelihoods of people in coastal communities across the world but are used and valued differently by different people at different times. As such, managing coastal resources equitably requires understanding how and when different people value ecosystems. Gleaning is an important activity in many coastal communities. However, the values of gleaners, and women in general, are often left invisible in coastal ecosystem service assessments and rarely examined in different seasons. Here, we use an exploratory case study to elicit the seasonal values of gleaning to women in a coastal community through an in-depth mixed method case study in Timor-Leste. We found that women gave a variety of instrumental and relational reasons for gleaning and that gleaning values shifted across seasons. Notably, subsistence was not a priority for all gleaners. Instead, there were a diverse range of reasons perceived as important for gleaning including to socialise or to spend time in nature. Our findings highlight the need to move beyond oversimplified understandings of gleaning as simply a matter of meeting basic material needs. The diverse and seasonal value priorities of gleaners in our case study indicate the importance of socially and temporally disaggregated assessments of coastal ecosystem services that account for relational values to support more accurate depictions of coastal livelihoods and equitable management in coastal areas

Gender equality in climate policy and practice hindered by assumptions

Gender has a powerful influence on people’s experience of, and resilience to, climate change. Global climate change policy is committed to tackling gender inequalities in mitigation and adaptation. However, progress is hindered by numerous challenges, including an enduring set of gender assumptions: women are caring and connected to the environment, women are a homogenous and vulnerable group, gender equality is a women’s issue and gender equality is a numbers game. We provide an overview of how these assumptions essentialize women’s and men’s characteristics, narrowly diagnose the causes of gender inequality, and thereby propel strategies that have unintended and even counterproductive consequences. We offer four suggestions for a more informed pursuit of gender equality in climate change policy and practice

Gender and small-scale fisheries in the Central Philippines

This dissertation provides new evidence for why women should be included in small-scale fisheries assessments. Women are commonly overlooked in fisheries science and management because they are assumed not to fish, or to fish very little. My research focuses on community-based managed fisheries in the Central Philippines. I begin with a literature review of women’s fishing around the world, revealing that it is common, diverse, and dynamic. Women fishers also often focus on species and habitats different from those in men’s fishing. Notably, however, the review also identified a considerable data gap in quantitative assessments of women’s fishing. I designed my case study specifically to quantify women’s contributions to the total community catch and effort. I found that women – who totaled 42% of all fishers – generated about one quarter of the total fishing effort and of the catch biomass. Explicit consideration of women’s fishing cast a spotlight on gleaning, an overlooked fishing method in which animals are collected in intertidal habitats. Almost all the women and half of the men gleaned. I found that gleaning primarily targeted sessile invertebrates, and was an important source of food, particularly when other fishing was not available. Marine management that affects gleaners – such as no-take marine protected areas (MPAs) placed in intertidal areas – needs to consider distinct ecological and social features of gleaning. On that basis, I used a gender lens to examine community-based management in the form of no-take MPAs. In this cultural context resource management is a male sphere, both in perception and in practice. Women were less likely to feel that the MPA had a positive effect on their fishing, with MPAs mostly identified as a management measure for finfish. Women were also less likely to participate actively in MPA management. In summary, my focus on women should prompt reexamination of how fishing is defined, who counts, and who is counted. Integration of women’s issues into fisheries management requires attention to gleaning, and exploration of alternative management methods. To overlook women, however, creates substantial underestimation of fishing labour and catch – with consequent worsening of our prospects for fisheries management globally.Science, Faculty ofResources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute forGraduat

Female intrasexual reproductive competition in the facultatively polygynous song sparrow

Reproductive competition among females is an under-studied aspect of behavioural ecology. In species where males provide non-sharable resources that enhance individual and offspring fitness, such as feeding young, intrasexual conflict among females should be expected. My thesis examined reproductive competition among female song sparrows by estimating the reproductive costs of losing male care and behavioural strategies females employed to avoid the loss of male care. I used a long-term study of song sparrows, a facultatively polygynous passerine, on Mandarte Island, British Columbia Canada, to examine the potential reproductive and survival costs that polygyny might have on females. I found that polygynous females without male care experienced lower nest and lifetime reproductive success than polygynous females with male care. In contrast, female status within polygynous groups had no impact on overwinter survival. Three strategies that females might use to avoid polygyny or ensure access to male parental care while in polygyny include 1) intrasexual aggression to deter secondary females from settling, 2) infanticide of primary female’s nest by secondary females to improve nesting status or 3) nest timing to either increase the comparative worth of the nest through synchrony, or eliminate competition for male care through asynchrony. Using a mount presentation experiment I found that resident females reacted as predicted if intrasexual aggressive behaviour was used to deter secondary female settlement and ensure male parental care. Over 18 years when polygyny occurred in the population, I found evidence that the presence of secondary females was correlated with a rise in the nest failure rate of primary females, but I found no evidence that polygynous females used nest timing strategies to influence access to male care. Overall, my results suggest that female song sparrows use aggressive behaviours to reduce secondary female settlement, and within polygynous groups secondary females may use infanticide to advance their status. Despite the existence of female strategies to circumvent the loss of fitness due to polygynous mating, polygyny still occurred regularly in the population. This observation suggests that the strategies described above are often not effective, or that their costs outweigh the potential gains to individual fitness.Forestry, Faculty ofGraduat

Women fishers in Norway: few, but significant

Professional fishing and fisheries quota systems can affect women and men differently, yet gender analysis of quota systems is rare. In this article, we use a feminist framing and a mixed methods approach to examine the long-term gendered effects of the introduction of the 1990 quota system in Norway. Using statistics from the National Fishery Registry and the Directorate of Fisheries, we found that the number of women and men registered as fishers has declined since 1990 (an overall decline of 59%). Over this period, men have consistently outnumbered women among registered fishers (2.7–3.2% women), among boat owners (2.23% women in 2017) and particularly among owners of larger boats (> 11 m), which can have multiple quotas (0.35% women in 2017). However, changes in the age and geographic location among women fishers reflect changes to fisheries overall, as well as highlighting the gender-blind entry barriers that disproportionately impact women. In addition, contextualising statistical data with participant interviews conducted in North Norway, especially in Finnmark, enables us to examine more closely why the gender gap remains. This mixed method approach also identifies changes women and men working in fisheries have undergone, while also addressing women fishers’ political efforts to improve gender equity in Norwegian fisheries. Our study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of Norwegian coastal fishing, and particularly women’s small but significant presence

Situated transformations of women and gender relations in small-scale fisheries and communities in a globalized world

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, we gather 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, we 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

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Gender-inclusive facilitation for community-based marine resource management

People who rely on a natural resource should be central to decisions about how that resource is used and managed. This principle is at the core of community-based resource management (CBRM) and other forms of collaborative management or co-management. CBRM aims for high levels of resource-user participation in decision-making and in managing resources. In practice, however, different social groups experience collaborative management approaches differently (Evans et al. 2011). The processes and outcomes of collaborative management can preferentially benefit (Cinner et al. 2012) or disadvantage (Béné et al. 2009) certain sectors of society and can also exacerbate existing power imbalances and lead to elite capture (Béné et al. 2009; Cinner et al. 2012) in which public resources are managed in a way that benefit a few individuals of superior social status to the detriment of the larger population. They may also inadvertently exclude or marginalize women (or other groups) from decision-making processes and from the resources they rely upon (Kleiber et al. 2015; Vunisea 2008). When management partners or facilitators engage communities, they must use deliberate, thoughtful and reflexive strategies to reduce the risk of exacerbating existing power imbalances (Schwarz et al. 2014). This brief draws upon lessons and experience from across the Pacific region, where there is a long history of community-based approaches to address fisheries and marine resource management (e.g. Johannes 1982). The region also has decades of national programming (e.g. King and Faasili 1998; Raubani et al. 2017), relatively recent high level recognition (Secretariat of the Pacific Community 2015) and widespread interest in spreading and improving these approaches (Govan et al. 2009). This brief helps facilitators use, reflect on, and adapt gender-inclusive strategies in their work with communities. It aims to increase the frequency and quality of strategies used to reach women, men, youths and other social groups in the preparation, design, implementation and adaptation stages of CBRM. While the advice here is prepared with the Pacific island countries and community-based fisheries and marine resource management specifically in mind, some elements are more broadly applicable and also reflected in extensive experiences and feminist research from other agricultural and development sectors. We focus on gender-inclusive strategies facilitators can use when working with communities. When used thoughtfully as part of a larger cycle of gender-aware reflection on the equity of the process, the strategies are meant to enable gender-equitable participation in CBRM discussions, negotiation, planning and decision-making processes. This is not a step-by-step manual on "how to do gender" or a recipe that will guarantee equitable processes or outcomes. While gender-inclusive facilitation or practice has multiple dimensions, in this brief we refer to this in shorthand as "reaching" women and men (See 'Reach' Figure 2). We begin by highlighting what it means to "equitably reach" women and men—or, in other words, being gender-inclusive in facilitation and who is responsible for doing thi

Existing Territories and Formalization of Territorial Use Rights for Moored Fish Aggregating Devices: The Case of Small-Scale Fisheries in the La Désirade Island (France)

Moored fish aggregating devices (MFADs) are used by small-scale fishers to access fish species difficult to harvest in large numbers. In the case of Guadeloupe (Caribbean area), the use of MFADs has increased considerably and this is causing congestion in these fishing areas and creating conflict between fishers. The aim of this article is to understand how informal fishing territories around the La Desirade Island were established and examine these territories through the lens of economic defendability theory. Results of semistructured interviews show that MFAD fishers display territoriality along MFAD tract lines forming quasi-privatized areas. Territoriality in this article is based on the following factors: the type of targeted resources, the cost of harvesting, the defending of territories, and the acknowledgment of territories by the fishing community. Conflicts and utilization of MFADs (overcapacity) have raised an opportunity to create co-managed legalized territorial use rights for fisheries

Gender and marine protected areas: a case study of Danajon Bank, Philippines

In this paper, we examine the role of gender in community-based management of marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Central Philippines. MPAs are a common conservation and fisheries management tool in this area, but the relationship between gendered fishing practices and participatory MPA management is rarely considered. In this region, women and men’s fishing practices are often socially and ecologically distinct. MPAs are found in both intertidal and subtidal areas where women and men tend to fish respectively. Based on over 500 interviews in 12 fishing communities, MPAs were largely perceived to be a management tool for men’s fishing. Very few men and women reported a negative effect on their personal fishing or displacement from their fishing area. However, in two communities MPAs that had been in intertidal areas had either been moved or opened specifically to allow for gleaning. Women were less likely than men to report that the MPA had a positive effect on their fishing, but women and men recommended the MPA in equal numbers. Women and men reported attending MPA meetings, but women were less likely to describe active participation in MPA management such as decision making. This research adds to the larger body of work that considers gender and inequality to critically examine issues of power and exclusion in community-based resource management