Date of Award

Spring 5-28-2025

Document Type

Campus Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Global Governance and Human Security

First Advisor

Stacy VanDeveer

Second Advisor

Samuel Barkin

Third Advisor

Nada Mustafa Ali

Abstract

Women are critical to fisheries economies and communities. While men tend to play the role of the main catchers of fish, women provide most of the post-harvest labor in roles such as traders/sellers and processors. Despite women’s key roles in small-scale fisheries, such as in advancing sustainable fisheries practices globally and in Kenya, they experience a host of gendered challenges including inequalities, underrepresentation in decision-making, low wages, insufficient recognition for their contributions, and gender-related violence. Furthermore, women’s situations often become more precarious when fish catches are low. These issues spark global debates around possibilities of reducing gendered-related inequalities in fisheries and fishing communities. Greater gender equality is needed for women in fisheries, including narrowing gender gaps in fisheries, and increased pay and income to ensure sustainable fisheries economies and livelihoods.

Using access theory and radical utu, a gendered indigenous approach that centered women’s equality in ‘personhood’, I comparatively examine whether, how, and why women have been socioeconomically marginalized in the Kenyan Coastal and Lake Victoria fisheries. Despite women being recognized as important contributors to fisheries economies and communities, they remain socioeconomically marginalized through a set of specific factors, including gender and cultural norms, and barriers to women’s access to fish and fishing resources, land ownership, and money. Through a national multilayered case study, this research draws on fieldwork conducted in 2022 and 2023. This field research builds on the author’s 12 years of experience researching and working on fisheries and aquaculture issues and communities in Kenya (and elsewhere). I conducted a total of 212 semi-structured interviews, surveys, focus group discussions, participant observation, and government and NGO reports to examine the complex lived experiences of women and listen to those voices most researchers and policymakers would otherwise not be able to hear. This research adds to our understanding of the politics of fish and the gendered power dynamics that shape access to resources for women and girls. It explores the way underexplored influences such as gender and social cultural norms, legal and illegal mechanisms of restriction, social relationships and (in)formal arrangements, and grassroots organizing, shape how women access fisheries resources at the local and national levels. This research challenges the invisibility that persists in scholarship about women and gender in various spaces and processes. It also centers women’s empowerment, agency, and resistance to oppressive social, economic, and gendered inequalities.

Comments

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