Tuna is women's business too: Applying a gender lens to four cases in the Western and Central Pacific

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2021 The Authors. Fish and Fisheries published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Meryl J. Williams— Retired. 1Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, New South Wales, Australia 2Independent Consultant, Lamlukka, Thailand 3The University of Auckland, Science Centre, Auckland, New Zealand 417 Agnew Street, Aspley, Queensland 4034, Australia


| INTRODUC TI ON
Tuna fisheries, from small to large scale, are carried out in most coastal countries. Their multi-species catches are processed and traded in marketplaces from local through to global. The industry is perceived as highly masculine, but this perception fails to take into account the women engaged in value chains. In this paper, we apply a gender lens to tuna industries in four countries of the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) to understand the gender division of labour in fishing, processing and trading nodes of value chains, gendered impacts and the (in)visibility of gender in tuna policy. We use results from recent gender and livelihood studies to construct case studies in four locations hosting tuna fleets, one or more processing factories and trading operations: Fiji (Suva and Levuka); Solomon Islands (Western Province including Noro); Philippines (General Santos City); and Indonesia (Bitung).
We use a gender lens to bring into focus people's roles, activities, responsibilities and power in tuna value chains. Gender is a social construct for characterizing people. Gender is not limited to two categories, but we have no data by which to understand gender as non-binary in tuna industries, so for the purposes of this paper we will take a binary approach. Gender is distinguished from sex, which refers to the biological and physiological characteristics of women and men.
Sex is often mistakenly assumed to be deterministic of all gender roles, leading to gender norms, which are the unwritten beliefs, opinions and expectations about how people should act as women, men, girls and boys. Moreover, 'women' and 'men' are not homogeneous classifications. In addition to gender, each person carries multiple identity markers such as age, life stage, race, religion, economic and cultural class and migrant status. These categories intersect to confer privilege or marginalization. Gender norms and the other categories used to discriminate among people intersect in WCPO tuna value chains.  (Williams & Ruaia, 2020). The other tuna species relevant to this study are albacore (Thunnus alalunga, Scombridae) and the coastal neritic tunas longtail (Thunnus tonggol, Scombridae), frigate tuna (Auxis thazard, Scombridae) and bullet tuna (Auxis rochei, Scombridae). Overall, 55% of the catch is skipjack caught by purse seine, most of which is canned and thus almost fully controlled through the industrial value chains. The rest is sold as whole raw fish, sashimi, fresh tuna steaks or smoked, operating through a more heterogeneous set of value chains.
The modern tuna fishing era started in the early 20th century with the pole and line and longline fleets of Japan moving out into the Pacific and Southeast Asia, establishing industries that changed over time but remain today (Appendix S1). Presently fleets from 26 countries fish in the WCPO, including from Pacific Island and Southeast Asian countries, China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, Europe, Latin America and the United States of America (USA).
The region-wide development of tuna fisheries in the 1970s and 1980s took place within a geopolitical landscape which included the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) negotiations creating the legal regime for coastal states, many newly decolonized, to assert their control over tuna in their exclusive economic zones (EEZs). In this period, tuna brands also prospered and changed their rent-seeking strategies, ownerships and loci of operations. 'Rent-seeking' is seeking to increase one's own wealth without increasing wealth overall, often through the use of government funding. In the global tuna case, it includes organizing production around trade agreements to avoid import tariffs, and organizing supply chain activities to avoid paying tax. Labour costs, access to resources and technologies for processing, transport and trade preferences drove the (re)location of processing operations globally (Havice & Campling, 2010). In some Pacific Island countries, at-sea and onshore jobs are nationally important-a tuna company has long been the largest private sector employer in Solomon Islands-but at a regional scale tuna employment is less significant. Tuna-related jobs equate to 22,350 making up less than 0.5% of the total Pacific Island countries' workforce (these job numbers are not standardized into a unit such as Full Time Equivalent [FTE] so should be treated with caution) (FFA, 2020).
The numbers of people employed in tuna processing and fishing are much higher in Southeast Asian countries-80,000 local and migrant workers work in tuna processing in Thailand (Asia Foundation & International Labour Organization [ILO], 2015). Tuna resources also support substantial small-scale fisheries and local value chains, many of which are informal, and thus largely not included in statistics. In both Southeast Asia and Pacific Island countries, employment onshore is higher than at-sea, with more opportunities for women.
About one third of tuna employment in FFA member countries is at-sea on fishing vessels and as fisheries observers, and two-thirds is onshore in processing and ancillary services, and fisheries management (FFA, 2020).
Attempts to develop national fishing and processing have been less successful in the Pacific (Barclay & Cartwright, 2007) than in Indonesia and Philippines, which have had domestic industrial tuna operations since the 1980s (Morgan & Staples, 2006). Due to geography and higher input costs, Pacific Island countries have been less competitive (Terawasi & Reid, 2017; Appendix S1) and foreign capital has remained necessary for investment and international trade connections (Campling, 2016; Appendix S1).
Fishing, processing and trading ownership and industry structures are heterogeneous and often complex (Figure 1, Appendix S2).
Structures range from multinational companies with fully vertically integrated ownership from fishing vessels to cannery to export and wholesale trade through to fishers working from tiny vessels selling their own catch in local urban markets and food outlets. In between are a multitude of small, medium and large firms fishing, processing or trading in intermingled domestic and export supply chains. A portion of the catch from industrial vessels always makes its way into local markets (Crona et al., 2016). Whereas most tuna fishers are men, women are heavily involved in handling, processing and marketing, and in business administration (Prieto-Carolino et al., 2021).

| MATERIAL S AND ME THODS
The objective of the paper is to apply a gender lens to WCPO tuna industries from local and small-scale to export and industrial scales, by identifying gender divisions of labour and impacts on women along value chains. To that end, we have used research from three bodies of work conducted since 2017 by the authors and colleagues on tuna industries in case-study countries (Table 1). This research is predominantly qualitative, using individual and group interviews, document review and workshops. One body of work was under the aegis of the USAID Oceans and Fisheries Partnership in Indonesia and the Philippines. This paper draws on gender analyses and labour assessments of the tuna industries in key tuna centres of Bitung, Indonesia (USAID Oceans, 2018a, 2018c, and General Santos City, Philippines (USAID Oceans, 2018b, 2018d. A second body of work was research investigating how the governance of fisheries affects the wellbeing of coastal communities in Indonesia and Solomon Islands, with case studies in Bitung and Ambon in Indonesia, and Noro and Gizo in Solomon Islands. This work examined the economic and livelihood aspects of tuna fisheries value chains, food supply and environmental sustainability, disaggregated by socio-economic status, migration status and gender (McClean et al., 2019). The third body of work examined the impacts of governance and tuna fisheries development in Fiji and Solomon Islands, using gender and climate change as lenses for conceptually modelling social-ecological system networks . National-level statistics for human development and gender inequality ratings have been used to contextualize findings from these projects, and policy documents reviewed to see how women and gender are addressed in fisheries policies.
The data presented in the Section 4 are drawn from the authors' three studies and other literature. Where points were drawn from interviews and focus groups, they have been fact checked, or are presented as perceptions. Referencing is used to show the sources of the many pieces of data used.

| LI M ITATI O N S
Much of the quantitative data needed to thoroughly explore this topic at a regional scale is non-existent, or is nationally specific or otherwise aggregated in ways that make a regional analysis difficult. In lieu, we have combined our own studies with other available data. The present study concentrates on roles and benefits through employment and business enterprises, with some consideration of gender in fisheries management and policy. We only minimally address how tuna value chains impact the reproductive labour of women (care work, domestic housework and other unpaid labour). We have virtually no information on gender power relations. Skipjack is mainly canned for export and local markets, or smoked.

| Tuna industries in case-study countries
Large parts of the yellowfin and albacore catches are also canned, as is juvenile bigeye. Neritic tunas may be smoked. High grade yellowfin, albacore and bigeye are sold fresh or frozen to sashimi and tuna steak markets internationally, or to local restaurants catering for affluent customers and tourists. For further details on the fisheries in each country, see Appendix S2.

| Employment in WCPO tuna value chains
Gender-disaggregated employment data are patchy. Major gaps are:  (Table 2; Appendix S2).  Fiji and Solomon Islands are members of the FFA, which reports data on industrial tuna fisheries of member countries, including gender-disaggregated employment data (Terawasi & Reid, 2017). In 2019 in FFA countries, women were 44% of all those employed in tuna fishing, processing and fisheries management, down from 52% in 2016. The gender division of labour differs markedly with each node of the value chains: women are 70% of employees in processing and ancillary services; 30% in the public sector; and less than 1%

Suva & Levuka, Fiji
in the harvest sector and among fishery observers (Table 2).
Fiji, Indonesia and the Philippines are ranked relatively low on the United Nations Gender Inequality Index (

| Fishing node
At-sea and shore-based work in the fishing node is mostly done by men, at all scales of fishing (industrial, medium and small scale).
Some women work in administration in onshore bases for fishing and very few go to sea (Table 4). In a few small-scale family enterprises in Bitung, Fiji and Solomon Islands women fish, often with their husbands, but sometimes independently (Satapornvanit & Parengkuan, 2020;Syddall et al., 2021). Some donor and non- In Fiji, a few women work in the workshops and offices supporting fishing operations. Fijian fishing companies commonly employ educated women in office work, including financial management, but few are in senior management (Table 4).
In addition to low participation, the masculinist nature of fishing has other direct and indirect social, economic and health impacts on women. When men work on fishing vessels they have jobs that bring income to their households, but may incur costs borne by other household members. Going to sea leaves women responsible for household and community obligations over extended periods. This has been worsened during the COVID-19 crisis as seafarers have been unable to return home due to travel restrictions (Marschke et al., 2021 Industrial tuna fishing has been associated with sex work and human trafficking in Fiji (Schoeffel, 2015;SPC, 2004;Sullivan et al., 2008;Syddall et al., 2021), General Santos City (Clariza, 2007) and Solomon Islands, including Noro (Barclay, 2008;Barclay et al., 2015). We are not aware of a study of transactional sex around USAID Oceans, 2018a, 2018b). All four countries have small-scale informal processing by cooking or smoking fish for local markets.
The gender division of labour in processing differs markedly from that in fishing. Fish processing in canneries and loining plants is majority female ( Table 2). This is in part due to the gender wage gap (women's labour is lower cost) and labour supply (Table 3), and also due to industry-wide stereotyping of women as well suited to the task of preparing fish for canning (Barclay, 2008;USAID Oceans, 2018a, 2018c. Some of the technical roles (mechanics, plumbers, machine operators) are male-dominated. Soltuna, the industrial plant in Noro, has undertaken programmes to encourage women into non-traditional roles such as forklift driver and electrician (Pacific Women, 2019). Other roles in processing firms comprise both women and men, although men tend to coalesce around the more senior, higher pay jobs in larger scale companies, and women coalesce around lower status, lower pay jobs in smaller scale enterprises (Table 5).
In contrast to industrial processing factory work, small-scale pro- in markets or dining houses, often in a paper bag as fish and chips (Table 6).
In processing, the economic, social and health impacts on women vary widely depending on the scale of the operations and people's positions and power within the operations. In industrial processing in all four cases, women were more likely to be in low paid work designated 'low skill' on processing lines. Nevertheless, wages for this work are equal to or greater than those for other waged work available to women in those locations. Moreover, fish processing line work in factories is safer than working on fishing vessels, and due to its formal nature has more social protections, assuming companies comply with regulations. These benefits vary according to local context but include health insurance, minimum wage levels, Small-scale informal processing has none of the social protections or security of formal employment, and may also have negative health impacts. For example, fish smoking as it is conducted in Bitung likely has negative effects on the health of processing workers exposed to the smoke, which contains toxic chemicals (Berhimpon et al., 2018).
Nevertheless, being self-employed in small-scale processing remains an important and flexible livelihood option. It is appreciated by many women as fitting around caring responsibilities. In some cases, informal businesses are more lucrative than formal processing work, and some women have built solid businesses around informal processing (McClean et al., 2019;USAID Oceans, 2018a. We interviewed women selling fish and chips in the market at Noro, who said had been working on the processing lines at SolTuna, but childcare was difficult when working at the cannery. They shifted to selling cooked food at the market because they could keep their children around them doing this work, and said the weekly income was higher selling cooked food.
Nevertheless, the small size and informality of women's processing businesses renders them vulnerable. For example, home-based cakalang fufu women processors in Bitung struggled to buy quality raw material when their Filipino suppliers were banned in the 2014 Moratorium against foreign operators, because suppliers prioritized larger processing companies.

| Trading node
Tuna trading businesses range in scale from small and local, such as selling fish that are locally caught or rejected from industrial vessels, to mass volumes of international products such as canned tuna and fresh/frozen tuna for sashimi and tuna steaks. Trading seems to be the main driver and source of profit for large-scale integrated fishing and processing companies (Barclay, 2008). In

| Effects of COVID-19
In fisheries worldwide, millions of people involved in both primary and secondary production activities have been affected TA B L E 5 Gender division of labour in industrial tuna processing (for canning and for sashimi and tuna steaks)

| Gender in WCPO
fisheries organization policies WCPO regional fisheries organizations and country governments have policies and strategies with varying levels of consideration to social aspects (including gender) of fisheries in general and tuna in particular (Table 7). Gender strategies, however, are focused mainly on coastal fisheries rather than tuna activities.
In regional fisheries, organizations gender initiatives have been slow to penetrate policies and more so practices (Appendix S2).

Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)
and strategies such as gender mainstreaming have not been taken up by any of the regional bodies. Gender mainstreaming involves integrating a gender perspective and analysis into all policies and programmes, rather than having a separate gender policy or programme.
In the Pacific, meetings and workshops still begin gender sessions with conversations about the cultural, traditional and organizational barriers to discussing gender in fisheries (PEUMP, 2018).  Fiji, 2021). Gaps remain between policy and practice, however, due to cultural barriers and safety concerns for women onboard tuna vessels Vunisea, 2016).
In Indonesia, women are not mentioned explicitly in fisheries and conservation technical policies even though technical policies such as the fight against IUU fishing greatly reduced activities in the fish processing sector, negatively affecting women workers (Suadi & Kusano, 2019). Women fishers lack access to the National Fishers' Registration System due to a national identification recording system that prevents them registering as fishers and defaults women's occupation as housewives (Satapornvanit & Parengkuan, 2020).
At the national level, the Philippines has more advanced genderresponsive policies that stipulate the representation of women in fisheries management councils and in governance to support the fishery sector. However, these policies are not fully mirrored in local codes, including those for the localized management and governance of the tuna industry. Fisheries sector employers do not completely implement national laws governing employment benefits and privileges affecting women, particularly in the fish processing sector (USAID Oceans, 2018b).
In Solomon Islands, national government policies and documents are more concerned with gender now than previously, responding to an international wave flowing from CEDAW (Braun, 2012). For TA B L E 7 National and regional organizational policies relevant to tuna fisheries and women/gender for decades (Havice & Reed, 2012;Nguyen et al., 2020;Sullivan et al., 2008;Tuara Demmke, 2006).
Despite women's numbers as workers and their dominance in some nodes, women are little recognized in fisheries management or policies affecting the value chains. Some limited progress has been made to improve women's opportunities in their present workplaces or to remove stereotyping and discrimination. Policy documents signal some change, as do the human resources practices of government fisheries institutions and some tuna companies. How deep are these changes, and are they likely to be long lasting? Among Pacific Island countries, we note that efforts promoting women in fisheries started in the 1980s. These, however, turned out to be waves F I G U R E 2 Schematic of the engagement of women and men in WCPO value chain nodes Graphic artist: Songphon Chindakhan of interest, with initiatives building then largely falling away again (Williams, 2014). Will the current interest in gender equality generate more permanent change? In 2020 and 2021, several papers provided criteria for assessing attempts at improving gender equality in fisheries (Lawless et al., 2020(Lawless et al., , 2021Mangubhai & Lawless, 2021), which shed light on the potential of changes noted in the Section 4 of this paper.  Community, 2020). In sum, thus far the norm of gender equality is not internalized by most tuna actors in the WCPO. Many have been exposed to the idea of gender equality in recent externally driven initiatives, and the next few years will reveal whether these gender norms will be resisted or adopted. Mangubhai and Lawless (2021) assessed the effectiveness of gender initiatives in fisheries management agencies in terms of whether they 'reach ' women, 'benefit' women, 'empower' women, or 'transform' gender relations. In this spectrum, reaching women is least effective in improving gender equality, and transforming gender relations is most effective. They find that gender work carried out by the fisheries agencies of Fiji, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands has mainly been 'reaching' women, rather than generating more effective change. That study was on coastal fisheries initiatives, but tuna fisheries are managed from within the same agencies, and our research finds similar tendencies towards 'reaching' and 'benefiting' women rather than gender transformation. This and in monitoring, evaluation and research to better understand gender equality in tuna industries. Responsibility for progress is thus spread across multiple stakeholders, and may best be achieved through collaboration.
In industrial operations, decent working conditions and opportunities for women and men is the responsibility of the private sector, regulated and supported by national government labour and industry laws to eliminate job discrimination and stereotyping, the gender pay gap and create supportive work conditions for women workers, including pregnant and nursing mothers. In many operations, structural workplace change will be required to achieve decent work such as ensuring human rights at sea and on shore by changing maritime norms that, on some tuna vessels, condone the ill-treatment-largely of men-at sea and devastates households, and the sexual exploitation of women in ports. Not only fishing and processing companies, but also trading and end-market companies have a responsibility to ensure their tuna has been sourced and processed under decent work conditions. National governments requiring onshore processing could also secure decent work conditions. Regional fisheries management organizations must also engage to make decent work issues a higher priority with national governments responsible for port and flag-state governance of the industrial fleets and factories. Workers and their representatives must be given legitimate voices in governance to balance the power over the industrial operations that currently rests solely with industry actors (companies and industry associations), many of whom formally attend regional fisheries meetings as delegates of member states (Petersson et al., 2019).
National government agencies are pivotal for creating and implementing gender-aware and even gender transformative tuna industry policies, and for representing national interests in WCPFC and in sub-regional bodies such as the Parties to the Nauru Agreement.
Their gender equality responsibilities in tuna should respect national gender commitments with respect to labour, care, education and social security, such as to CEDAW and Sustainable Development Goal

| CON CLUS ION
Since the social benefits from tuna are throughout whole value chains, tuna policies should address whole value chains, and all the women and men in them. However, regional and national tuna fishery management focuses on the at sea operations of the industrial fishing node, with the goal of promoting its growth while maintaining tuna stocks. Some governments and sub-regional groups pay attention to onshore industrial processing and market standards to leverage exports and extract greater value from their tuna stocks, but not explicitly because of the benefits to women. Existing gender policies relating to WCPO tuna fisheries are vague and immature.
Women's productive work in tuna value chains and their reproductive work supporting men who fish at sea are largely overlooked.
The lack of gender-responsive policies and social protection results in inequity, missed opportunities for inclusive growth, and makes women more vulnerable or easily subjected to sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse in the workplace and in the domestic space. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of any other researchers, organizations, countries or governments mentioned in the paper.

CO N FLI C T O F I NTE R E S T
The authors have no conflicts of interests.

AUTH O R CO NTR I B UTI O N S
K.M.B and M.J.W. designed/conceptualized the paper, and all authors provided ideas, data, wrote and edited the paper.

DATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T
Data used in this paper are not available for use by other researchers for two reasons. Some of the data is protected by the ethical approval conditions of the research, as is usual for qualitative data where the identity of the speaker may be visible even once their name has been removed. Other data are not public due to the intellectual property requirements of the research contracts.