WSI WATCH 2020: free report
“If policy makers and decision takers don’t understand these stories, of women‘s lived experience and enormous challenges across all aspects of our industry, then it might be time to reflect on whether they are really equipped to create meaningful change.”
This more-than-100-page free report, including 250 stories from 55 countries, aims to show fisherwomen’s reality, the challenges they face, and the energy they engage to make things happen.
It includes a foreword by Dr. Manu Tupou-Roosen, Director General of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency.
You are invited to share this resource with your friends, colleagues, bosses and employees.
Women, victims of the COVID-19 pandemic
The year 2020 will forever be remembered as the year everything stopped, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns and quarantines have affected every activity, and the negative impacts on all aspects of human life could be felt by all ages and genders.
In the WSI WATCH 2020 starting page 98 you will find a limited number of articles reporting the impacts of COVID-19 on women working in fisheries and aquaculture sectors, their challenges and recovery.
FAO & WSI #IWD 2021
This year FAO organised a specific event on women in seafood, with the support of WSI. This very well organised moment gave us the opportunity to question the type of leadership we want.and to call for an international workshop to share the diagnosis and open relevant questions with top male leaders sitting in public institutions as well as in private businesses.
You can find the agenda and speakers bio following this link.
You can also watch the video of the event on YouTube.
The uncomfortable truth: women are better leaders than men
If women are better leaders than men, why are they not in charge?
Because we pretend to pick the best person for each job, while simply picking those we prefer: and when the jobs pay well, they are still overwhelming male. Our preferences are based on style rather than substance, so we pick individuals for leadership on the basis of their confidence rather than competence, charisma rather than humility, and narcissism rather than integrity. Not just in politics, but also in business, the typical leader is not known for their humility or competence, but arrogance and incompetence.
Read this mind-blowing article published in Forbes.com. It gives some clues while global marine resources are poorly managed: Women better than men.
European seafood campaign 2021: men, men, men
In its last seafood consumption campaign, the European Commission promoted 9 top chefs, of which eight males, one female. How could the EU organise this totally gender unbalance campaign, when at the same time it is vocal about its gender equality policy? If the institution is not to blame, its lack of control of what its stuff does probably is.
The team in charge of the campaign told WSI that they selected Michelin stars chefs, where women are rare. This criterion can be questioned.
For a second justification, they mentioned that women invited refused their invitation. At the end, women are always to blame!
WSI VIDEO competition 2021
What is not seen doesn’t exist to… policy makers. WSI organises the “women in seafood” video competition to give a chance to the 100 million women who make the seafood industry as we know it, to be seen.
For the fifth year in a row, WSI opens its door to videos describing their lives in the seafood environment. The 90 videos that we have received can still be seen. They tell us stories that we would have never seen before if the competition had existed.
We invite you to participate: make it short, make it sharp, send us your video and win 1,000 Euros. You may submit your video by sending it to womeninseafood@wsi-asso.org
You and WSI
If the seafood industry were a country, it would be one of the most gender unequal in the world, with gender inequality taking different pervasive forms. Because the cost of inaction is bigger than the cost of action, because gender equalities clearly benefit both gender, WSI offers all the fishing and aquaculture stakeholders, corporates, administration, professional organisations and NGOs to help them progress on the issue of gender balance. We understand that good intentions only do not make a sustainable project, we need your support. WSI alone will not change the world. We need cooperation, solidarity, networking with like-minded actors.
WSI advocates for a seafood industry free of gender inequalities. Support our efforts by making a donation.