Improving fisheries estimates by including women’s catch in the Central Philippines

Abstract

Small-scale fisheries catch and effort estimates are often built on incomplete data because they overlook the fishing of minority or marginalized groups. Women do participate in small-scale fisheries and often in ways distinct from men’s fishing. Hence, the inclusion of women’s fishing is necessary to understanding the diversity and totality of human fishing efforts. This case study examines how the inclusion of women’s fishing alters the enumeration of fishers and estimations of catch mass, fishing effort, and targeted organisms in 12 communities in the Central Philippines. Women were 42% of all fishers and contributed approximately one-quarter of the fishing effort and catch mass. Narrower definitions of fishing that excluded gleaning (gathering of benthic macroinvertebrates in intertidal areas) and part-time fishing masked the participation and contribution of most women fishers. In this case study, it is clear that overlooking women and part-time or gleaning fishers led to the underestimation of fishing effort and catch mass. Overlooking gleaning had also led to underestimation of shells and other benthic macroinvertebrates in fishing catches.