Abstract
Women play an important role within small-scale fishing communities in the South Pacific, contributing to food security and income. Yet, decisions on the management of coastal fisheries are mostly taken by male community leaders. Given that women and men interact with marine spaces differently, there is a need to further analyze women’s and men’s differentiated roles and participation in marine resource use and governance. This study does so by drawing on qualitative data from a case study in Solomon Islands. In the fishing community studied here, women had crucial and differentiated effects on social, economic, and ecological sustainability. Our study reveals that women provided significant social and economic benefits to their families and the broader community. At the same time, we find that some women were inclined towards breaking local marine management rules (i.e., potentially lowering positive ecological effects of the conservation efforts) because (1) women had been little involved in the decision-making with regard to local marine management; (2) women had partly lost trust in the local male leadership due to a perceived misuse of money; and (3) women were more constrained in their fishing activities because a marine closure was located where mainly women used to fish. Our study highlights the importance of paying attention to women’s needs and actions in the governance of the fishery—including both the positive as well as potentially negative consequences thereof. Furthermore, our study shows that, besides gender, other socio-cultural variables (i.e., religious denomination and place of birth) shaped a person’s role and interactions in the fishery. It thus adds weight to intersectional approaches to gender.
Highlights
On a global scale, fisheries have for a long time been—and often continue to be—seen as a primarily male domain
Consensus reached in the women’s focus group revealed that more women had started to fish for income, too, especially since the demand for fish from middlemen had increased. Both focus groups further revealed that fishing activities aimed at the sale of fish were increasingly happening inside the marine closure, i.e., against local management rules, due to a higher catch per unit effort in this area which led to an Beasy catch^ and Bquick money.^
We find that patterns with regard to participation in decision-making and local marine management—and partly, as a result thereof, behavior towards management—were gendered
Summary
Fisheries have for a long time been—and often continue to be—seen as a primarily male domain This is partly due to the gendered division of labor in the fishing sector, This paper belongs to Topical Collection (En)Gendering Change in Small-scale Fisheries and Fishing Communities in a Globalized World. Women play an important role within fishing communities and households in the Pacific; through their active participation in fishing and the harvesting of marine invertebrates, women contribute essentially to food security and income. Women have concentrated their harvesting activities on inshore areas and lagoons, using rather simple tools. Their methods are sophisticated and require a profound knowledge of the ecosystem and species characteristics (Lambeth et al 2001; Chapman 1987). In Solomon Islands, a recent study found that women contribute more than half of the subsistence catch and are increasingly fishing for income, too (Krushelnytska 2015)
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