Women’s voices must be heard in the battle to save the ocean

The author contends that the exclusion of women from decision-making and the lack of gender-disaggregated data in the fishing and aquaculture sectors hinder the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 14. The text highlights systemic inequalities in pay and roles, suggesting that empowering women through funding, education, and representation could increase productivity and innovation in ocean conservation, similar to trends observed in global agriculture.

• Sustainable Development Goal 14 fails to embed or mention gender, despite the fact that fishing and aquaculture are not gender-neutral and involve significant inequalities in pay and work segregation. Men typically handle offshore and high-value fishing and aquaculture, while women are concentrated in lower-paid or unpaid roles such as fish processing, sales, and maintenance.
• Women face systemic barriers to influence and resources in the ocean sector, including limited representation in deliberative bodies and restricted access to funding, technology, education, and market information. These barriers are driven by cultural biases, power imbalances, and inadequate anti-discrimination laws.
• There is a critical shortage of gender-disaggregated data in the fishing sector, from catch to consumer, which limits the ability of scientists and policymakers to address gender-specific impacts and solutions regarding the oceans and climate change.
• Drawing a parallel to the global agriculture sector, where providing women with land rights and technical training can increase food productivity by over 20%, the document suggests similar productivity and sustainability gains are possible in fishing and aquaculture if women are empowered.

APA

Liswood, L. (2019). Women’s voices must be heard in the battle to save the ocean. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/stories/nature-and-biodiversity/womens-voices-must-be-heard-in-the-battle-to-save-the-ocean/

Chicago

Liswood, Laura. Women’s voices must be heard in the battle to save the ocean. World Economic Forum, 2019. https://www.weforum.org/stories/nature-and-biodiversity/womens-voices-must-be-heard-in-the-battle-to-save-the-ocean/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |last1=Liswood |first1=Laura |title=Women’s voices must be heard in the battle to save the ocean |publisher=World Economic Forum |date=11 January 2019 |url=https://www.weforum.org/stories/nature-and-biodiversity/womens-voices-must-be-heard-in-the-battle-to-save-the-ocean/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{liswood2019womens, author = {Liswood, Laura}, title = {{Women’s voices must be heard in the battle to save the ocean}}, publisher = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2019}, month = jan, url = {https://www.weforum.org/stories/nature-and-biodiversity/womens-voices-must-be-heard-in-the-battle-to-save-the-ocean/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }