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Disciplines: Natural Resources Management, Social Sciences
Region: Gulf of California
Chapter: La Paz
The Altata-Ensenada de Pabellones lagoon system in Sinaloa has more than 22,000 ha of estuaries and mangrove forests, and 7 communities that depend on fishing for their subsistence. In this region, women have an active participation in fisheries capture activities, in some cases exceeding men’s contribution to the production of certain products, mainly bivalves.
Unfortunately, this situation is not reflected in the official statistics. Since fisherwomen do not have fishing permits, they are not associated in cooperatives or any other form of fishing organization, and they do not participate in the decision-making processes that involve the fisheries sector. This, in turn, has important implications not only at the level of resource management but also at the level of environmental justice and the economic and power relationships in these communities, since access to government support programs or legal sale and fair prices of catches is already mediated by these processes. As a result of our research, we hope, through the application of surveys to each of the fishing women, to characterize for the first time their participation in fishing in Sinaloa, to make visible their participation in the capture and commercialization processes of the fishery products, to identify the main obstacles they face as fisherwomen and generate a proposal to the different authorities that contributes to gender equity effectively within the fisheries sector.
