Women's contributions to fisheries
Country analyses to inform more inclusive and just fisheries governance.
Colette Wabnitz of the Center for Ocean Solutions leads a collaborative global initiative with partners across nearly 30 countries.
Women make essential contributions across fisheries systems, from harvesting and processing to trading and other related activities. Yet their roles often remain under-recognized in policy and practice. This invisibility is shaped by structural constraints, including entrenched social-cultural norms, limited sex-disaggregated data, unequal access to resources, and limited representation in decision-making. Together, these barriers continue to affect women’s rights, safety, and economic opportunities.
This project brings together three interconnected components designed to generate evidence, support dialogue, and inform more equitable and inclusive fisheries governance systems:
- Country fact sheets providing context-specific analyses of women’s contributions to fisheries, the barriers they face, and opportunities to support their leadership, well-being, and equitable participation. Fact sheets are available for 28 nations across Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific, as well as South and Southeast Asia.
- A systematic analysis of governance documents, complemented by engagement with key informants, examining how gender considerations are reflected in policy and implemented in practice, respectively. The analysis highlights both areas of progress and remaining challenges in implementation.
- Two regional workshops – held in Fiji in partnership with the Pacific Community and in Panama with the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism – bringing together representatives from government, regional agencies, civil society organizations, and academia. Participants shared experiences, discussed systemic challenges, and identified practical pathways for advancing gender equity in fisheries.
Co-development is central across all three project components, with outputs shaped through sustained collaboration with researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers to ensure they are locally grounded, policy-relevant, and responsive to diverse social and institutional contexts. Together, these efforts aim to increase the visibility of women’s central roles in fisheries and support a shift in narrative and policy that recognizes them as critical knowledge holders, stakeholders, and leaders.
Project origins
This project builds on a collaboration initiated in 2021 by Lead Scientist Colette Wabnitz of the Center for Ocean Solutions and Associate Professor Albert Norström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. The collaboration produced a global synthesis (in English and French) of gender-equitable approaches to strengthening resilience in ocean and coastal systems, particularly for developing island and coastal nations on the front lines of climate change. This report was followed by an initial set of eight co-developed fact sheets for countries across coastal Africa.
- Colette Wabnitz | Lead Scientist, Center for Ocean Solutions
- Josheena Naggea | Blue Food Futures Program Manager, Center for Ocean Solutions (contributed expertise to the Mauritius fact sheet)
- Zach Koehn | Research Data Scientist, Center for Ocean Solutions (contributed expertise to the forthcoming Indonesia fact sheet)
- Elizabeth Selig | Managing Director, Center for Ocean Solutions (contributed expertise to the Senegal and forthcoming Indonesia fact sheets)
This work is supported by the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance and is funded by the United Kingdom through the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and by the Government of Canada through the federal Department of Environment and Climate Change. For the Belize, Haiti, Ghana, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Tuvalu, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, Honduras, and Grenada fact sheets, funding was also provided by the United States Department of State. For work in the Pacific Island region, additional financial support was provided by the European Union and the Government of Sweden.
All opinions, findings, and conclusions stated in key documents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the organizations listed.
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