Katia Frangoudes

Promoting Gender Equity and Equality Through the Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines: Experiences from Multiple Case Studies

Gender equity and equality is the fourth guiding principle of the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Guidelines), and sits within its wider human rights framework. The SSF Guidelines contain acknowledgement of the roles of women in the small-scale fisheries value chain, the need for gender equity and equality in access to human well-being resources, and the need for equal gender participation in fisheries governance. While the inclusion of gender in the SSF Guidelines is unprecedented and encouraging, effective implementation is the critical next step. Part of the implementation process will include the creation of culturally and regionally-specific information that allows local agencies to recognize and prioritize gender needs. To provide an example of the diverse and interacting issues related to the implementation of the gender equity and equality principle, we use case studies and expertise from seven countries and regions. We examine the context-specific issues that should be considered in the implementation process and focus on the many barriers to gender equity and equality in small-scale fisheries. We conclude by outlining the many gender approaches that could be used to implement the SSF Guidelines, and suggest a gender transformative approach. Such an approach focuses on illuminating root causes of gender injustice and inequality, and requires on-going examination of power relationships as well as capacity development for women and marginalized groups.

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

Women 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.

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)

ABSTRACT 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.