THE STATE OF WORLD
FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE
2020
seasonal, temporary and permanent occupations.
Workers in fisheries and aquaculture are often
engaged in more precarious types of employment,
and at the far end of the spectrum there is forced
labour and slavery. FAO’s extensive work in the
forum of decent work is detailed in the section
Social sustainability along value chains, p. 118.
The number of people engaged in the fisheries
and aquaculture primary sector varies by region.
Figure 14
provides the regional breakdown using
sex-disaggregated data. Overall, the highest
numbers of fishers
and aquaculture workers are
in Asia (85 percent of the world total), followed
by Africa (9 percent), the Americas (4 percent)
and Europe and Oceania (1 percent each).
Africa has experienced steady growth in the
employment numbers in the sector, with most of
the employment still being provided in fishing.
Employment in aquaculture continues to increase
in Africa, but with smaller absolute values.
Asia continues to grow in terms of employment
in the sector, albeit at a more measured pace with
its large absolute number
of people employed in
the primary sector of aquaculture and fisheries.
Oceania also displays a small, but steady increase
in employment, with fisheries being quite
consistent and the low numbers for aquaculture
slowly climbing. Employment in the Americas
and Europe has been declining in fisheries and
aquaculture. However, viewed separately, in
Europe, aquaculture employment has continued
to grow slowly while
fisheries employment has
been declining since 2010.
Globally, the proportion of women in the total
work force in aquaculture (19 percent) is larger
than that in fisheries (12 percent) (
Figure 14
).
Overall, women play a crucial role throughout
the fish value chain, providing labour in
both commercial and artisanal fisheries.
Where appropriate technologies and capital are
at their disposal, they also act as small-scale
entrepreneurs, particularly in household-level
cottage operations. In most regions, women
are less involved in
offshore and long-distance
capture fishing. For example, in the United States
of America, women in the Alaskan fisheries
are mainly engaged in the near-shore salmon
fisheries (Szymkowiak, 2020). In small-scale
coastal fisheries, women are generally
responsible for skilled and time-consuming
onshore tasks, or they manage the smaller boats
and canoes going out for fishing.
Aquaculture is being
promoted as a significant
growth sector, and as an activity that can
empower women and young people, notably by
facilitating women’s decision-making on the
consumption and provision of nutritious food
(FAO, 2017). However, Brugère and Williams
(2017) recall that attention must be given to the
species grown, preconceptions about gender
roles
5
and control over production in order for
women to be indeed
empowered and benefit from
these potential advantages.
Although FAO does not routinely collect
statistics on employment in the secondary
sector, many authors and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) report that one out of
two seafood workers is a woman, when both
the primary and secondary seafood sectors are
considered (see example highlighted in
Box 2
).
FAO is currently collaborating with the OECD
for the collection of such data.
The plan is to
assess the availability of these data for other
countries in the coming years to better reflect
the relevance of post-harvest employment
data and obtain a more comprehensive
assessment of the fisheries and aquaculture
sector, taking into account the importance of
women’s contribution to production, trade, food
security and livelihoods. These improvements
will also be critical to allow the development
and design of gender-sensitive fisheries and
aquaculture
policies, in order to promote the
role of women in fisheries and aquaculture and
pragmatically move towards gender equality
in the sector. However, it must be emphasized
that sex-disaggregated data are not sufficient to
reflect the reality and the real position of women
working in the various segments of the industry.
In particular, such data do not reflect their role
and
responsibilities, their access and control
over resources, assets, credits, information,
training and technology, nor the power they
have (or do not have), their decision-making, and
nor their access to leadership. It is essential to
adopt a gender lens alongside the collection of
5
Common roles of women in aquaculture: small-scale production,
post-harvest industrial and artisanal processing, value addition,
marketing and sales.
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