Services unvalued, roles unrecognized

Fishing as a livelihood activity has always been identified with men. This despite women having been active in fisheries from pre-capture to post-harvest since many ages past. To this day, women in fisheries remain invisible.

These sentiments could well sum up the findings of two studies on women presented before some 150 participants of the recently concluded Fisherfolk Summit on Municipal Fisheries in Cebu City.

The papers presented by Dr. Ilda Siazon, chancellor of the UP in the Visayas and Gaynor Tanyang, information and project officer of Tambuyog Development Foundation, disclosed that the contributions and role of women in the industry are many and diverse, and, though vital to the industry, were found to be "unvalued" and "unrecognized."

Siazon’s study focused on the psycho-social setup of fisherfolk among selected coastal communities in the Visayas. Tanyang’s study, on the other hand, synthesized prevailing issues and emerging perspective on fisheries and gender. The Siazon study found that contributions of the women were concentrated on the pre- and post harvest activities with the men dominating actual fishing. Pre-harvest activities include mending nets, cleaning the boat, and preparing the men’s needs before setting out to sea. The men could be the husband, father or brother. Actual fishing, on the other hand, includes going out to sea to fish, casting the nets and setting other fishing gears, and harvesting while post-harvest activities relegated to women include fish sorting, drying, fish processing and vending.

Tanyang explained that contributions of women in fishing were not given economic value. Such services were considered as "social functions of the wife and an extension of the domestic responsibilities," she pointed out, In an economic sense, these women’s services are not considered as "work," she concluded.

Tanyang pointed out that in many instances, women were found also to engage actively in actual fishing, both nearshore and offshore. Offshore fishing activities include going out to sea with the men, helping them in casting fishing lines and nets, installing stationary nets and gears, hauling the nets to shore and gathering fish from the nets and other fishing gears into containers. When actually fishing offshore, women use the fishing gears like hook and line, beach seine, scoop nets, traps, fish baskets and even spears.

Both studies found that women also engaged in nearshore activities such as cleaning shells, oysters, clams, seaweeds, sea urchins and starfish, all for household consumption, making medicinal concoctions and for marketing. Other nearshore activities include gathering of fish and prawn fry which are sold to aquaculture farm operators. Tanyang stated that women are also active in aquaculture particularly in helping the men in feeding the fish, cleaning and guarding the fish cages and ponds, water sampling, harvesting and marketing. A case cited was in Batan, Panay Island, where women and children were trained in tilapia cage culture as part of a community-based coastal resource management (CB-CRM) project there.