Abstract:

A curated set of sex-disaggregated statistics on employment in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors were disseminated by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) for the first time in 2016. For the period of 2009-2014, only 27 % of FAO Member countries reported sex-disaggregated employment data for the fishery sector and 33 % for the aquaculture sector.The FAO data on employment focuses on the primary sector and does not include information about the secondary sector of post-harvest processing activities.In 2014, the average number of women engaged in both fisheries and aquaculture in the reporting countries was 19 % of the total workforce and, when considered across a four year average, the figure was 15 %. This paper presents a focus section on the reported statistics for Asia, where women, on average, made up 15 % of the workforce in the primary sectors for those countries reporting. An attempt has not been made to provide estimates for countries not reporting. Enhanced statistics for the secondary post-harvest and service sectors, not presently covered in FAO fisheries and aquaculture statistics, would greatly improve the understanding of the importance of women's contribution to fisheries and aquaculture, food security and livelihoods. To complement the encouragement for improved national reporting, FAO offers support through tools and guidelines to improve data collection efforts that form the foundation of reporting. Future work needs to continue to support the use of inclusive activity definitions to better include the fisheries and aquaculture activities in which women are typically engaged. Finally, in 2017 the employment dataset for fisheries and aquaculture will be released including thereported sex-disaggregated figures.

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Date 2017/12/31

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