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REVIEW article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Aquatic Foods
Volume 8 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2024.1327798
This article is part of the Research Topic Food System Transformation and the Realization of the UN Sustainable Development Goals View all 24 articles
Using a sustainable food systems framework to examine gender equality and women's empowerment in aquatic food systems
Provisionally accepted- 1 WorldFish Center, Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya
- 2 WorldFish (Malaysia), Penang, Malaysia
- 3 Stockholm Environment Institute Asia Centre, Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand
- 4 Centre for Research in Psychology and Human Well-Being, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, National University of Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia
- 5 Department of Fisheries, Lilongwe, Malawi
- 6 University of Greenwich, London, London, United Kingdom
This article aims to generate novel insights by examining gender dynamics within aquaculture and small-scale fisheries, employing a gendered agrifood systems conceptual framework to comprehensively analyze gender equality and women's empowerment in aquatic food systems. To do this, it evaluates 202 articles using a scoping review methodology. Though additional literature from 19 articles was pulled in to provide the context. The findings are that aquatic foods value chains and food environment are negatively impacted by gender disparities in terms of women's agency, access to and control over resources, gendered social norms, and policies and governance. This hampers the ability of women to engage in and benefit from aquatic food systems. This results in gendered disparities in dietary outcomes, low achievements in relation to gender equality and women's empowerment, and less adaptive capacity in relation to developing resilient livelihoods.The article acknowledges the importance of developing and leveraging women's agency and bargaining power, strengthening their access to and control over key aquatic food systems resources, tackling harmful gender norms, developing gender-sensitive data collection and analysis to inform evidence-based policymaking, and implementing gender-responsive and gender-transformative policies and strategies to create an enabling environment for these interventions to succeed. Investment in multi-level, and multi-layered, gender-responsive and gender-transformative approaches are needed to co-developwith women and their organizations -positive, gender-equitable norms to strengthen women's agency and decision-making at a variety of levels, ranging from individual to policy level.
Keywords: Aquatic food systems, food systems framework, gender inequality, women's empowerment, and power dynamics origsite=gscholar&cbl=237324
Received: 25 Oct 2023; Accepted: 17 Jun 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Adam, Lam, Lozano Lazo, McDougall, Rajaratnam, Pasani, Forsythe, Rossignoli and Ouko. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Rahma Adam, WorldFish Center, Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya
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