Toward a Global Picture of the Economic Contributions by Women in Fisheries

Suggested Bibliographic Reference: Challenging New Frontiers in the Global Seafood Sector: Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, July 11-15, 2016. Compiled by Stefani J. Evers and Ann L. Shriver. International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade (IIFET), Corvallis, 2016.Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, held July 11-15, 2016 at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Center (AECC), Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.Women's contributions to fisheries are often overlooked in fisheries management, economic analyses, and consequently, in policy decisions. Fortunately, women's contributions are gaining recognition despite a lack of quantitative data describing the scope and scale of their participation in the sector. While there are numerous studies describing the role of women in fishing communities around the world, the standard collection of policy-relevant, sex-disaggregated data is lacking. While existing studies have roughly estimated the number of women in fisheries employment globally, these calculations represent data from few countries, scaled up to the global level. Here, we present a first attempt at estimating participation by women along the fish value chain for all maritime countries of the world as a step towards assessing the value that women in the seafood industry bring to the global economy. We draw together existing studies and estimates, and the knowledge of local experts to highlight and account for, on a country-by-country basis, participation by women in the fisheries sector. The overall aim is to bring about greater recognition to the role and importance of women in the fisheries sector and influence the perception that their role is of lesser value than that of men, and that informal and unpaid work-whether done by women or men-make valuable contributions to fishing communities and to the economy worldwide