The fisheries sector has made exceedingly slow progress when it comes to valuing and implementing gender equality as relevant and integral to fisheries planning, management and development. Emerging research from Melanesia is showing the conflation of gender with women is a reoccurring theme, and approaches used by fisheries managers and practitioners are designed to ‘reach’ women, but not address the underlying structures and power relations that create inequalities. However, there is a surge in efforts in the Pacific region to create trainings and a diversity of tools to help the fisheries sector integrate gender equality into their work. Fundamental to making progress will be the ability and willingness of fisheries and development practitioners and their organisations to break down silos and work collaboratively towards gender equality in the fisheries sector.

Sangeeta Mangubhai is a marine ecologist with 25 years of environmental science and management experience from the South Pacific (Fiji, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu), Indonesia (Flores, West Papua), East Africa and Australia. She is a Principal Consultant at Talanoa Consulting, a small, multi-disciplinary consultancy based in Suva.

This is an in-person seminar at the Australian National University, Canberra.

Venue: Lecture Theatre 2, Hedley Bull Building, 130 Garran Road, Acton, Canberra.