2023
OCEAN EQUITY: GENDER
A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science
AUTHORS
AUTHORSHIP STATEMENT
Annet Pauwelussen, PhD Collaborating Professor, Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Wageningen University & Research
Pauwelussen: Conceptualization (overarching goals and aims), development of methodology, supervision of literature review and analysis, writing of original draft, review and editing, project administration.
Sallie Lau Student Fellow, Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus University of Washington
Lau: Carrying out complete literature review and analysis, development of methodology, writing original draft, review and editing.
Acknowledgements The research was funded by a grant from the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center. The authors are grateful for the intellectual and administrative support by the Ocean Nexus team, and particularly Yoshitaka Ota and Karin Otsuka Trudo. Special thanks go out to Leah Huff for proofreading and final edits. Earlier versions of this report have been presented and discussed at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2021 and the Centre for Maritime Research MARE Conference in 2021.
Table of contents Summary
5
Introduction
6
A typology of gender research
8
Linear and typological approaches to reviewing
8
Four ways of gender research
9
Gender as object
9
Gender as epistemology
10
Gender as subject
12
Gender as political project
13
Methodology and methods
15
Selection of articles
15
Review and analysis
16
Positionality
17
Results
18
Gender as object in marine social science
18
A development approach to gender
19
Visibilizing women
19
Visibilizing gender roles
21
Dismantling binaries
21
Masculinity
22
Concluding
23
Gender as epistemology
23
Questioning hegemonic approaches to thinking gender Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 2
23
Rethinking modern divides in marine studies Gender as subject
25 26
Researchers’ positionality
27
Positionality of marine social science
28
Intersectionality
28
Gender as political project
29
Example 1 Masculinity, race and recreational fishing in Australia
30
Example 2 Critical reflection on “women’s empowerment” in Madagascar
30
Example 3 Masculinities and Karuk Indigenous fisheries
31
Discussion
32
Identifying gaps and risks involved for tackling ocean inequities
32
A plea for gender-as-epistemology research
33
A plea for gender-as-subject research
36
A plea for gender as political project research
37
References
39
Appendix 1 List of articles reviewed and analyzed
51
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 3
Summary Marine social science has seen an increase in attention for gender issues over the last decades, particularly in fisheries-related studies. This growing body of literature has made important steps towards a better understanding of the different roles of women and men in sea-related practices, and how these are patterned by power relations. However, the discussion of gender in marine social science has predominantly focused on the role of women–and men–in fisheries. What remains underexplored are broader questions of how dominant systems of thinking and governing human-sea relations in science, policy and society are gendered, and how feminist theory can help tackle structural gendered inequities. The aim of the study funded by Ocean Nexus was therefore to explore the affordances of feminist theory to (re)thinking and advancing ocean equity. We explored how feminist theory – including queer theory and gender studies – can help reframe academic and policy debates on human-ocean relations, and illuminate the structural asymmetries therein. The overall question driving this project was: How do current gender approaches in marine science compare to gender and feminist theoretical debates in environmental science and humanities more broadly? The research consisted of a systemic iterative literature study of how gender has been theorized and analyzed in marine social science. Through a systemic analysis of 68 selected articles (period 2000 2020 and an additional review beyond the selection criteria, the study traced and analyzed dominant strands of gender approaches in marine social science, and explored what kind of gender research falls outside of these approaches. The review and analysis of results is based on 4-way typology of gender research. This conceptual framework outlines four approaches to analyzing gender; namely as 1 object, 2 epistemology, 3 subject, and 4 political project. In the first, gender is approached as the object of study. The second reflects on how ways of understanding and theorizing the world are gendered. The third reflects on gendered biases and positionality of, and in, scientific practice. The fourth identifies root causes to gendered inequities and commits to help tackle these and build alternative futures. The review shows three aspects surfacing in how marine social science literature approaches gender. First, this body of literature tends to approach gender predominantly as an object of study (gender-as-object), studying gender roles and structural asymmetries therein as well as ways to address unequal gender roles, with a focus on fisheries. Many of these studies build on theoretical frameworks associated with development studies. Second, what remains structurally underexposed is the issue of Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 4
positionality in gender research practice, and the ways in which theorizing and knowledge production is itself gendered, with political implications. Third, looking beyond the established canon of ‘gender in marine social science’ literature, we identify how gender-as-subject and gender-as-epistemology approaches allow for critical reflection on biases that uphold power asymmetries, and the positionality and responsibility of researchers (and marine social science more broadly) vis-a-vis the communities they study. Considering gender as a relation and not as a category is essential for intersectional inquiry that takes in interlinked inequities of gender, race, class, colonial relations, among other things. For gender research in marine social science to become a “political project,” and substantially and critically contribute to ocean equity, it needs to engage with the different dimensions of gender. Such gender-as-political project research is mindful of the way it orders and conceptualizes human-ocean relations, and in what ways epistemological assumptions and ways of knowing are foregrounded or excluded. It is also reflexive in the positionality of both researchers, researched, and the research or citation communities that it mobilizes and speaks to, and the inequities this may involve or produce. Taking in these other approaches and dimensions of gender research is vital for expanding the scope of political projects gender research in marine social science can help tackle.
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Introduction Marine social science has seen an increase in attention for gender issues over the last decades, particularly in fisheries-related studies. This growing body of literature has made important steps towards a better understanding of the different roles of women and men in sea-related practices, industries, and livelihoods, while also shedding light on structurally gendered inequalities therein Bennett, 2005; Frangoudes & Gerrard, 2018; Gaynor, 2010; Harper et al., 2013; Knott & Gustavsson, 2022; Schwerdtner-Máñez & Pauwelussen, 2016; Thompson, 1985 . Fisheries has been the primary focus of this scholarship, and a range of case studies have highlighted the vital contribution of women in fish trade, processing, gleaning, and entrepreneurship Overå, 2003; Resurreccion, 2008; Vunisea, 1997; Weeratunge et al., 2010; Zhao et al., 2013 . Still, as already signaled by Harrison, when linked to ocean governance, there is a tendency of adopting the language of gender studies while shifting to “projects for women” Harrison, 1995 . Such narrowing down of gender to “women’s roles” risks sidelining the transformative potential that gender studies and feminist theory have for advancing ocean equity in a broader sense. Beyond the marine domain, one can find an expanding assemblage of gender studies that takes gender analysis beyond the differentiated roles of women versus men. Over the past decades, feminist and queer theory has infused environmental social science and humanities with critical reflections on the concepts and logics that structure dominant ways of thinking and organizing human-nature relations. A notable example is the dismantling and rethinking of (white) Western modernity’s nature/culture, human/animal, male/female, and mind/body divides Frazier, 2016; Haraway, 1989; Ortner, 1972; Probyn, 2016 . To challenge such established dichotomies, feminist scholarship has advanced theories of environmental care and justice and centered relational, affective, and open-ended understandings of “nature,” “human,” “body,” and “space” Gumbs, 2020; Hayward, 2010; Neimanis, 2017; Parreñas, 2018; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017 . The potential of using feminist theoretical approaches to critically reflect on how we think, do and govern human-ocean relationships remains, however, relatively marginal in marine social science. Casting the net wider is essential for a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the multiple relations between gender and the sea, and how these relations are political at different levels, with different implications for ocean equity Knott & Gustavsson, 2022 . The aim of the reported study was therefore to explore the affordances of feminist theory to (re)thinking and advancing ocean equity. We explored how feminist theory – including queer theory and gender studies – as an assemblage of thought and scholarly critique can Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 6
help reframe academic and policy debates on human-ocean relations, and illuminate the structural asymmetries therein. The focus of this research project was motivated by 1 our ambition to extend the ongoing research and policy work of Ocean Nexus on equity and justice in ocean governance to incorporate the critical issue of gender and 2 our proposition that taking full account of a feminist critique requires the discussion of gender in marine social science to go beyond the argument that “women fish too” in order to center the broader question of how dominant systems of thinking and ordering human-ocean relations in science, policy, and society are gendered. The research project 2020 2022 was funded by Ocean Nexus Center and based at the Environmental Policy Group of Wageningen University, The Netherlands. The overall question driving this research project was: How do current gender approaches in marine science compare to gender and feminist theoretical debates in environmental science and humanities more broadly? The research consisted of a literature study of how gender has been theorized and analyzed in marine social science. Based on systemic, iterative literature search and analysis, we created an extensive annotated bibliography on feminist theory and methods in marine social science studies (available as supporting material). We have, on one hand, reviewed gender studies and feminist/queer theory in and outside the context of environmental studies, and, on the other hand, reviewed how these theories feed into marine social science literature on gender equity. The purpose of this was to find overlaps, differences, and gaps between the two, to identify how the analysis and understanding of gender in marine science can – and need to – be reframed to advance ocean equity. The next section provides a conceptual framework for the literature review. Building on feminist and queer theory beyond the marine domain, this framework outlines four approaches to analyzing gender; namely as 1 object, 2 epistemology, 3 subject and 4 political project. This is followed by a methodological justification. Subsequently, we present the findings of the literature review according to the four types of gender approaches, and outline what kind of insights these approaches generate for understanding gender equity. In the discussion, we reflect on the consequences of how gender is approached and analyzed in marine science, and draw out the importance for rescoping gender analysis in marine science to advance ocean equity.
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A typology of gender research Linear and typological approaches to reviewing Over the last four decades, the development and flourishing of gender research has been well documented, and there have been several reviews of gender in marine social science and environmental history (e.g., Frangoudes et al., 2019; Knott et al., 2022; Schwerdtner-Máñez & Pauwelussen, 2016; Williams, 2019 . What these reviews generally have in common is how they trace the chronological history of gender research in marine spaces. Linear and chronological approaches to reviewing gender research may outline and follow a progression from marine science being gender-blind towards making gender relations visible, and highlighting conditions to improve gendered livelihoods Lawless et al., 2021 . This has shed light on the significant gains made by gender research in drawing attention to women's access to resources (e.g., Cohen et al., 2016 , the participation of both men and women in fishing and gleaning (e.g., Kleiber et al., 2015 , and the gendered differences in how maritime communities can respond to changes in economy, climate, and livelihoods Lau et al., 2021 . However, linear approaches to reviewing past scholarship are not without critique. There is a politics involved in which authors and what kind of studies are included or excluded as belonging to the reviewed scholarship. Referring to often-cited works of the past may re-confirm rather than question established dominant citation communities, and may by default ignore authors or approaches that differ. Moreover, BIPOC Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) feminist scholars have pointed out that when gender emancipation is posited as a linear progression, there is a tendency to promote strategies to equalize benefits and impacts for women and men. They emphasize the risk of leaving unaddressed broader systems of power and injustice through which gender is interwoven with racism, colonialism, and capitalism Mohanty, 2005; Nightingale, 2006; Todd, 2016 . Taking this critique seriously thus requires reflection on the way reviewing itself creates and applies a particular ordering in scholarly debates. In this review of gender and feminist studies in marine social sciences, we decided to depart from the notion of a linear progression to advancing gender equity. Instead, taking a cue from queer and trans environmental scholarship Woelfle-Erskine, 2022 , we started this review from the assumptions that there is a multiplicity of ways to do gender, and work with an analytical typology of different dimensions of gender research. In this, we consider gender research as a fluid, expansive set of approaches to collectively engage with power asymmetries, binaries, epistemological justice, and social movements within marine conservation and fisheries, as well as other sea-related issues. Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 8
Four ways of gender research We typologize four ways of engaging with feminist praxes in research: gender as object, gender as epistemology, gender as subject, and gender as political project Holzberg, 2017 . We use Holzberg’s typology because it touches upon the multiple ways feminist praxes can be unsettled, adopted, and advanced in marine studies Figure 1 . Whereas Holzberg’s 2017 typology was published as a blog and not a peer-reviewed publication, it reflects and is supported by different feminist analyses of how gender is approached in science more broadly Haraway, 1988; Harding, 1992; Ortner, 1972; Pesole, 2012; Wilson, 2009 . We decided to use this typology because of its clear formulation that fits our purpose of making an analytical distinction within gender research in marine social science. This typology also allows gender research to defy a single category. It emphasizes how gender research is fluid and intersectional, and can engage with one or many or all of these dimensions. Here, we define and elaborate on these categories by bringing in the works of other feminist scholars within and beyond environmental studies. Figure 1. The four interacting dimensions of doing gender research
Note. From Why feminism: Reflections on the multiple meanings of doing gender studies, by B. Holzberg, October 19, 2017, Engenderings.
Gender as object One way to study gender is to think of it as the object that one looks at, analyses, and – in some cases – aims to enhance or empower. Approaching “gender as object” necessitates a process of objectification, in which something fluid and multiple is enacted and presented as something that can be delineated, analyzed, and acted upon. This comes with certain benefits. Thinking of gender as object can help us understand gender differences and how Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 9
these affect the communities, systems, and environments. Objectification in itself is neither good nor bad, as simplification and objectification are inherent to processes of conceptualizing and making sense of the world (cf. Law, 2004 . At the same time, there is a risk of reification and simplifying gender positions and roles as static, when the fluidity and multiplicity of gender drifts out of focus. Gender-as-object studies generally focus on the embodied and social differences between women and men, the social conventions dictating what they can or cannot do with their lives, the gendered spheres of influence and inequality between them, and women’s subsequent positions of power within a household, community, or society Davis & Nadel-Klein, 1992; Sen, 1995 . In particular, ecofeminist studies and development studies have traditionally approached gender as object in their analyses Ortner, 1972; Shiva, 1988 . The main purview of this gender-as-object research includes improving the social positions of women, securing their socio-economic equality, and increasing their political representation. As a result, much of this research is concerned with increasing the legitimacy and appropriateness of women as agents in society. In other words, making women more “visible” Sen, 1995 . Of concern is also the distribution of freedoms, assets, and capabilities Kabeer, 1994; Sen, 1995 . Gender-as-object studies have made important contributions to scrutinizing women’s stereotypes, collecting gender-disaggregated data, enacting anti-discriminatory laws Kabeer, 1994 , and examining gendered power dynamics that influence social and political life, as well as environmental relations Agarwal, 1992; Hawkins et al., 2011; Rocheleau et al., 1996 . Gender as epistemology Gender-as-epistemology studies make explicit how the way we understand, know, and conceptualize the world is gendered. This way of doing gender research thus reflects on gender bias in epistemological traditions in Western) science and society, and uses or develops alternative feminist, queer, and trans methodologies and knowledge practices in approaching a study object (not necessarily gender) Anderson, 1995; Haraway, 1988; Wilson, 2009; Woelfle-Erskine, 2022 . Scholars do gender-as-epistemology in multiple disciplines, including but not limited to geography, anthropology, science and technology studies, political science and environmental humanities. For example, Mountz and Hyndman 2006 critique the gendered coding of global as “masculine” and local as “feminine” and how that poses as a barrier to understanding the effects of globalization on the everyday and the intimate. In geography, Mollett and Faria 2018 – thinking with Black Feminist scholars such as Hooks Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 10
2015 , Moraga and Anzaldúa 2015 , and Crenshaw 1989 – have outlined how feminist intersectional ways of thinking transformed geographical theory, by highlighting the spatial organization of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism. From the angle of science and technology studies, Parvin and Pollock 2020 question the innocence of the public policy term “unintended consequences,” and how it is used by people in power to acknowledge the shortcomings of their decisions-making without taking accountability in how their policy designs might uphold structural inequalities like sexism or racism. They take inspiration from the feminist technoscience approach of Haraway 1988 , among others. In environmental social science, gender-as-epistemology has been influential particularly in interrogating the nature/culture divide in modern thought Box 1 , and showing how this divide intersects with dominant assumptions of gender as binary Box 2 . Especially in their combination, the logics of binary thinking can essentialize the category of woman and man and associate them with the categories of nature and culture respectively. Ortner’s 1972 influential thesis on “is female to male as nature is to culture?” questions a near universal assumption of women being closer to nature than men, and its implications for how gender relations are understood and prescribed.
Box 1 The nature/culture divide The nature/culture binary arose out of Enlightenment traditions that insisted on the separation between man (culture) and nature. During the Enlightenment, which was also a period of colonization, the divide between culture and nature was founded on the assumption that the raw material of nature was passive and available for working, exploiting (or cultivating) by the Man of the Western, patriarchal culture Kimmerer, 2013; Østmo & Law, 2018; Parreñas, 2018; Plumwood, 1993 . Such a construction of nature reflected the power relations at work: the dominance of man over nature, and the right of modern, Western man to erase other cultures who opposed their dominance or governance of nature Kimmerer, 2013; Østmo & Law, 2018; Parreñas, 2018; Plumwood, 1993 . These power relations were upheld by the epistemological traditions of Western science; scientific notions of objectivity and the positioning of rational scientists outside of nature allowed them to create knowledge about it and use that knowledge to govern it Descola & Pálsson, 1996; Harding, 1986; Latour, 1993 . Feminist science and technology scholars have sought to dismantle such power relations by critically examining knowledge- making practices of scientists and their constructions of what nature is (e.g., Haraway, 1991; Law & Mol, 2002 .
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Box 2 The male/female divide The male/female divide is a dualist conceptualization of gender identities. Like the nature/culture binary, it creates a dominant-subordinate power dynamic that centers the Western) man and renders the non-man, which is often the woman, in a marginalized position Anzaldúa, 2012 . Some feminist traditions have also used the gender binary to make arguments against patriarchal power relations and the subordination of women. For example, some strands in ecofeminism have posited that women and nature were closely connected due to a shared history of oppression by the patriarchy Gaillard et al., 2017; Sultana, 2020 . Still, many LGBTQ , Black, brown, and Indigenous feminist scholars have advocated for moving beyond categorizing gender identity as either male or female. Such categorization excludes the experiences of individuals who do not identify as male or female, or communities for whom gender binaries are a colonial imposition of norms Gaillard et al., 2017; TallBear, 2014 . It also does not take into account that neither men nor women are fixed, homogenous groups. A focus on binary categories of male and female risks ignoring the fact that gendered oppression can be compounded by power asymmetries within racial, class, caste, or religious divides Crenshaw, 1991; Hooks, 2015 . As discourses of binaries often reinforce gender norms rather than dismantle them Santos, 2015 , upholding them can undermine moves towards gender justice.
In challenging the male/female divide, queer ecological theories have been especially critical about the construction of what is “natural” in relation to gender Mortimer-Sandilands & Erickson, 2010 . For example, Mortimer-Sandilands 2008 challenges the often-implicit ways in which perspectives of nature and ecology are constructed along patriarchal and heteronormative expectations of reproduction, family, and heterosexuality. Gender-as-epistemology approaches do not necessarily have gender as a study object. In fact, often they do not. Rather, these approaches reflect critically on how practices of knowing and conceptualizing the world are gendered, and the power relation this involves or enables. This, in turn, makes room for plural and non-hegemonic ways of knowing to be included in research. Making explicit how certain systems of thought and conceptualization (often implicitly) take precedence over others, gender-as-epistemology often engages in debates around epistemic justice and the need to acknowledge and take
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in plural ways of knowing in science, governance, and design Baker & Constant, 2020; Escobar, 2018; Medina, 2013 . Gender as subject Gender-as-epistemology shows that gender relations feed into not only what one aims to understand but also how one aims to understand the world Holzberg, 2017 . How one researches – the formulation of research questions, the use of methods and approaches – is inherently tied to our biases and the terms we set for generating knowledge Braidotti, 1994 . Reflection on these biases and terms is therefore important to be accountable for the kind of knowledge one’s research produces. Gender-as-subject studies therefore engage in the feminist practice of critically examining authors’ ‘positionality’ (bias, privilege) as a challenge to (white, male) scientific tradition of emphasizing objectivity. The persistent ideal and myth of value-free science (cf. Latour, 1993 has been critiqued for upholding hierarchical and exploitative relations between Western science and other knowledge systems Mohanty, 2005 , sustaining racist, sexist and colonial biases in scientific practice, and denying accountability for resulting harms Harding, 1995; Liboiron, 2021 . To make explicit positionality in scientific practice, gender-as-subject research focuses on the question of who does the research and what the implications are for which knowledges are centered or ignored as a consequence. In her 1988 essay entitled “Situated Knowledges,” Haraway argued against the objective “gaze from nowhere,” which is a conquering gaze that becomes active in the repression of other knowledges (e.g., Black and Indigenous feminist knowledges), and which breeds denial of such repression (see also Arvin et al., 2013 . Instead, gender-as-subject research acknowledges the situatedness of scientific practices, and reflects on the (often implicit) relations, preferences, and privileges that shape how knowledge is produced. Central questions include: Who is doing the research? What and whose interests does our research serve? To whom are we accountable? Who is “we”? TallBear, 2014; see also Liboiron, 2021 . Gender-as-epistemology and gender-as-subject approaches are interrelated; to reflect on our gendered subjectivity in doing research presupposes that our understanding of the world is not neutral but gendered. Yet, they can also be analytically distinguished. While gender-as-epistemology focuses on gendered systems of thinking, gender-as-subject brings into the picture the researcher or author and their responsibility for the knowledge they (co-)produce in relation to others. As such, gender-as-subject also pays attention to whose knowledge a researcher includes in their studies Haraway, 1988; Reyes Cruz, Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 13
2008 . This also links back to the politics involved in academic practices of citing and reviewing that we mentioned at the start of this section. Recently, several initiatives have aimed to rework academic genealogies to acknowledge the intellectual work of authors that have been sidelined or overlooked due to their gender, race, or ethnicity. Examples are the “Citation Matters” open-access and crowd-sourced syllabus in environmental anthropology by Guarasci, Moore, and Vaughn 2018 , the “Ancestors Project” by the same authors and the “Cite Black Women” initiative by anthropologist Christen Smith.1 Gender as political project Gender-as-political-project research expands and advances feminist and queer politics Holzberg, 2017 . Arguably, a lot of gender research, in particular gender-as-object research, does gender-as-political-project, advocating for gender equity through the pursuit of equal access to capital, recognition, or political representation. Many works of second-wave feminism sought to advance equal representation for women and men in the workplace. In a similar vein, gender-as-epistemology research often develops and hones methodologies that minimize harm to oppressed communities and produce knowledge intended to transform power inequities (e.g., TallBear, 2014 . For the purposes of this study, we consider gender as “political project” as research that names the roots of inequities explicitly, theorizes how to dismantle them, and commits to imagining and helping build alternative futures. For example, Frazier 2016 discusses the writings of Sylvia Wynter 2003 and Jane Bennett 2010 to disrupt “previous notions of the political” and imagine a new environmental politics for Black feminist ecologists. Frazier explicitly mentions the politics they are disrupting – “previous” or Eurocentric ones, and the future she wants to build – an environmental politics that centers practices and experiences of Black people. She elaborates on this in a later article: “Black Feminist Ecological Thought is not the result of ‘adding’ Black feminist principles to existing Eurocentric approaches of ecocriticism; rather transforming both movements” Frazier, 2020 . Other examples of gender-as-political-project studies include Todd 2014 , who looks at human-fish relations through Indigenous feminist methodologies to advance Indigenous sovereignty as an environmental politics; and TallBear 2014 , who reflects on her work with geneticists and Indigenous communities using an Indigenous feminist perspective to advocate for care as an alternative politics of science research. Commitment to a political project might best be seen not just through an individual article by a scholar, but by examining their body of 1
https://www.citeblackwomencollective.org/ Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 14
work. For example, Todd’s bibliography – and her public interactions outside of scholarly work – fiercely tackles colonial understandings of human-animal relations and asserts Indigenous presence and sovereignty. Similarly, TallBear’s work more broadly uses an Indigenous feminist perspective to center care in research practices. The typology of gender research as object, epistemology, subject, and political project serves our purpose of mapping the field of marine social science. Rather than outlining a chronological progress of how gender studies have evolved in marine research, we apply the above-mentioned typology to investigate how gender research is predominantly done in marine social science, what approaches might be ignored or less-developed, and what marine social science could therefore learn from gender studies beyond the marine domain. Before we do so, we first outline our methodological approach for this study.
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Methodology and methods Selection of articles The purpose of the study was to trace and indicate the dominant strands of gender approaches in marine social science and to shed light on what kind of gender research falls outside of these approaches. In order to do so, we conducted an analytical review of academic papers, books, book chapters, and policy reports. We searched for relevant writings published in the past 20 years at the time of analysis 2000 2020 using the following keyword and abstract search terms: gender OR feminist OR feminism AND fish OR fisheries OR conservation OR restoration AND marine OR sea OR ocean OR coast We performed this search on various platforms. First, we searched the academic databases of Web of Science, Scopus, and Sage. Second, we targeted our search to the websites of relevant journals pertaining to marine, environment, and gender studies: Maritime Studies, Marine Policy, Fish and Fisheries, Ocean and Coastal Management, Gender, Place & Culture, Geoforum, and Environment and Planning D Society and Space. From each journal, we included either the first ten articles that fulfilled all of the search criteria, or all of them (if n 10 from that journal). Third, we gathered additional relevant articles, reports, books, and book chapters using a snowball method of searching through the bibliographies of articles yielded by the journal search. We recognize that with our methods, we have not included all gender-related papers in marine social science. The keywords and the sample size are narrowly selective, and a lot of relevant work may fall outside of the results of the keyword search. This is partly accounted for by the additional snowball method, through which additional sources were added, and the triangulation that our 3-way sampling approach allowed for. Moreover, we also argue that our keywords are ones to logically use when searching for gender research in marine social science. And, as many of these gender-related papers cite one another, our sampling method sufficed to portray a citation community within marine social scientists using the same key words. The results we present in this report are therefore representative of the body of literature that shows up in a general search for gender in relation to the marine domain, including most cited authors and papers and current “canon” of gender in marine research. We assume that a discussion of what is in this canon can be
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worthwhile to break open. From this round of article selection, we included a total of 68 articles Appendix) for systematic review. Review and analysis Next, we systematically read the text of each paper to get more descriptive detail on how they were doing gender or engaging in feminist praxis. For each paper, we read and coded answers to questions related to the object, epistemology, subject, and politics of gender typology. These questions include: “How is ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’/ ‘male’ and ‘female’ constructed?” and “Is positionality acknowledged, and if so, what position(s) is (are) the author(s) speaking from?” These questions (see Box 3 were developed through an iterative process of engaging with broader feminist literature within and beyond environmental disciplines. We examined gender theories in this broader literature, their relevance to marine social science, and from this formulated question we could pose to the selected articles in marine social science.
Box 3 Research questions for literature analysis 1.
What kind of academic traditions related to gender and feminism is the article tracing? Who is cited most often? From what fields and periods of time?
2. What is the theoretical approach? 3. How are “nature” and “culture” constructed? (e.g., as binary, essentialized, relational)? 4. How are “masculine” and “feminine” / “male” and “female” constructed? 5. What (if any) other binaries are discussed in relation to the nature/culture, masculine/feminine, and/or male/female binaries? 6. Is positionality acknowledged, and if so, what position(s) is/are the author(s) speaking from? 7.
How is gender defined/understood? How is it conceptualized in relation to the sea?
8. What is left ambiguous or unresolved?
We conducted the literature review by first reading through the most cited articles in each journal to get a sense of the “canon” before moving on to less-cited articles, which might present more of an “alternative” gender approach in marine social science research. Similarly, we read the articles from prominent marine social science journals like Marine
Policy and Fish and Fisheries first, to develop a sense of gender and feminist research in these canon journals. We then proceeded to search for and read relevant articles in Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 17
affiliated journals that are not particularly marine-focused. This enabled us to discern a pattern of, for example, more gender-as-object research in the canon of often-cited papers in gender research, and identify alternative perspectives to gender in articles that were less-cited or published outside marine-focused journals. The literature review was conducted in an iterative manner. The questions in Box 3 were formulated after a preliminary scan of the collected literature to review. Once formulated, all 68 selected articles (see Appendix) were reviewed along these eight questions. However, we noticed that the more articles we read, the more nuanced we were able to answer these questions. For example, some of the literature helped us better understand the concept of “binary” and what kind of binaries could be identified. As a result of this iteration, the quality of answers to the designated questions at different stages of our research was uneven. Thus, when writing up the first draft of the report, we cross-checked and re-read some of the articles to verify the accuracy of our interpretations. Through our analysis, we identified gaps in the literature that were found through the keyword search explained above. We subsequently looked for marine social science and humanities literature that does address these gaps, but is not directly found through the keyword search. This could be either because they do not include the keywords, or because they may not be found through the used search engines (e.g., in case of book chapters). This additional search was based on our own engagement with feminist marine social science and affiliated literature over the years, combined with snowball sampling from the references lists in the papers that surfaced through our keyword search. For the additional feminist marine social science literature, we aimed for papers in the same time period range as the original 68 selected papers. Adding and comparing these additional papers allowed us to elaborate and deepen our analysis and discussion of the review results. Positionality The knowledge presented in this paper is an outcome of not only the existing work that we analyze, but our own relationships to it. Lau began the project with knowledge of feminist frameworks and an interest in decolonial methodologies, but without experience of conducting gender-as-object marine studies that involved fieldwork. As a researcher from the East Asian part of the Global North, she also had no connection to the mostly Global South communities being researched in the works analyzed. She acknowledges that critically reviewing papers at a desktop has very different stakes than doing primary research work on the ground, and that the secondary research of a literature review is Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 18
even farther removed from the material conditions and local contexts of such communities. However, she also brings first-hand experience of participating in international, grassroots feminist and environmental movements, and her analysis of this work also aims to reflect the knowledges produced in such movements. Pauwelussen started the project with prior experience doing fieldwork research on gender relations in fisheries and marine conservation. However, gender had not been her primary object of study. Rather, she has a long-term interest in feminist and decolonial theory and methodology in the marine domain, which we refer to as gender-as-epistemology in this report. As a white female researcher from a European university in the Global North, she acknowledges the privilege and potential bias involved in the selection and analysis of gender scholarship. While she aims to engage Indigenous, Black, and other marginalized voices in marine and feminist scholarship, her comprehension of the full scope of these literatures, and the experiences on which they are based, is limited. She brings first-hand experience of long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Global South communities, an academic endeavor that is itself embedded in asymmetric and colonial relations. In her current analysis and writing she strives to reflect on and explore ways to tackle the gendered power relations involved in research encounters, including her own.
Results The majority of the articles linking gender to the marine domain focus on fisheries, and to a lesser extent on marine conservation. Applying the gender typology framework, our review of gender research in marine social science 2000 2020 shows a pattern in how the concept of gender is approached, defined, and operationalized in this diverse body of scholarship, emphasizing a particular type of gender studies over other ways of doing gender research. Through random and judgmental snowball sampling (see previous section: “Methodology and methods”), we find three important aspects of research surfacing in relation to how this body of literature approaches gender. First, we see a dominance of the gender-as-object approach in marine social science, mostly embedded in, or building on, concepts and theoretical frameworks in development studies. Second, while the gender-as-object approach has made important contributions to the study of gender within marine social sciences, it has structurally underexposed the issue of positionality in gender research practice, as well as the way in which knowledge production itself is gendered, with political implications. Third, we identify ways in which gender-as-subject and gender-as-epistemology approaches allow for critical reflection on Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 19
persistent binaries that uphold power asymmetries in fisheries and marine conservation and the responsibility and positionality of researchers to the communities they study. Taking in these other approaches to doing gender research in marine social science is vital for expanding the scope of gender-as-political-project in marine social science. Gender as object in marine social science The majority of papers we reviewed research gender foremost as object, meaning that they look at gender roles and structural asymmetries therein; the resultant inequality in fisheries and conservation programs; and ways to better understand, address, and undo these unequal gender roles. The theoretical approaches of these papers vary, ranging from looking at gender dynamics with a descriptive, anthropological lens on fishing communities (e.g., Deb et al., 2015; Pettersen, 2019 to exploring fishers’ identities, issues of citizenship, agency, and performativity from a feminist geographical standpoint (e.g., Waitt et al., 2020 . Acknowledging this diversity, our review identified qualities that this diverse assemblage of literature has in common in terms of how it approaches, defines, and applies gender-as-object as the primary analytical lens. First, it is to a more or lesser extent rooted in the interdisciplinary branch of social science that takes a development approach to gender. This is shown by the academic works and citation community rooted in international development and sustainable livelihoods literature that it builds on. Second, in its rendering of gender and gender roles as object to study and develop, it generally aims for making visible women and gender (roles) in fisheries and marine resource management. We elaborate these points below. A development approach to gender This line of research generally works from a gender and development approach, focusing on livelihoods, wellbeing, and access to resources for women in fisheries. These papers yield important insights into the roles of women in the fisheries supply chain and how they navigate relations within households, communities, and environments. Gender-as-object fisheries and marine conservation studies predominantly follow a comparative research design, using a development studies or affiliated approach. Such studies reflect the concerns of broader developmental small-scale fisheries and conservation debates around the topics of livelihoods and wellbeing Allison & Ellis, 2001; Béné, 2006; Weeratunge et al., 2014 , food security Béné et al., 2007; Cohen et al., 2019; Kawarazuka & Béné, 2010 , capabilities, agency, and participation of fishers and community members in conservation decision-making Cinner et al., 2018; Gill et al., 2019 . They tend to use gender-disaggregated data (women and men separately) to compare the Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 20
livelihood and food security contributions, the well-being, and the relative agency of women and men Harper et al., 2013; Lawless et al., 2019; Porter & Mbezi, 2010 . Fortnam et al.’s 2019 study on the gendered nature of ecosystem services provides a fitting illustration of this trend; the authors note that their research was part of a broader study on ecosystem access and community well-being. But since they had collected gender-disaggregated data, they were able to analyse and highlight gendered differences in how community members in East African countries can actually access and utilize marine resources to supplement their livelihood. Visibilizing women Although they use similar indicators and metrics of research, the purpose of gender-as-object studies differs from mainstream development research in fisheries and conservation. The use of gendered disaggregated data and thus the comparison of women and men’s roles within a household or community is important for highlighting the disparities in productive and reproductive labour performed by women and men. One of the main insights from gender-as-object studies is how women’s productive labour in fisheries, and thus their actual contribution to food security and household/community wellbeing, is relatively invisible compared to that of men Fröcklin et al., 2014; Harper et al., 2013; Kleiber et al., 2015 . The aim of this research is often to collect empirical evidence that shows that women participate in all nodes of the fish value chain – in the actual catching of fish in addition to the roles of trader, processor, and fishers’ wife that women have been known to occupy Bennett, 2005; Pauwelussen, 2015; Rohe et al., 2018; Weeratunge et al., 2010 , also in historical context Schwertner-Máñez & Pauwelussen, 2016 . For some, the visibilization can be literal; evidence is quantitative and statistical, so that women can be counted as “significant” laborers in production Bradford & Katikiro, 2019; Kleiber et al., 2015 . Visibilization is not only a project of ensuring that women’s productive labor does not go unseen. It is also a project of ensuring that women’s labor is being seen as equal to that of men’s. In this, the gender-as-object research can feed into the formulation of gender research as political project (see section: “Gender as object in marine social science”). From our review, we see that much of the gender-as-object research is based implicitly or explicitly on the political objective of allocating women as much legitimacy and representation as men socio-economically and politically. These efforts to equalize women and men are evident in the three main arguments for what we refer to as “counting women” as a means for improving fisheries management:
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First, counting women allows for women-used habitats to be equally managed as men’s. More knowledge of women’s fishing and women’s catch allows for more environments to be “seen” as habitats and fishing grounds, thus enabling better management and conservation strategies for enhancing social-economic well-being and ecological resilience in, and in relation to, those habitats Baker-Médard, 2017; de la Torre-Castro et al., 2017; Fortnam et al., 2019; Purcell et al., 2020 . Second, counting women allows for the equalization of women’s ecological knowledge to men’s. Because women can work in different habitats than men, they can have different knowledge and perspectives of the sea based on the resources they extract Gerrard, 1995 . Counting and seeing women as fishers not only legitimizes their work, but also their knowledge Salmi & Sonck-Rautio, 2018 . Third, visibilizing women as fishers shows that they are stakeholders in the fishery just as much as men are, and deserving of equal benefits and rights, participation, and representation. Visibilizing women allows scholars and practitioners to argue that women should be considered in development and conservation policies (i.e., that policies should not be gender-blind) Stacey et al., 2019 . It also allows for researchers to argue that women should be allowed to participate or be represented in decision-making arenas and to advocate for their own fishing interests and benefits, just as men are allowed to be Baker-Médard, 2017; Cohen et al., 2016; Diamond et al., 2003; Hillenbrand et al., 2015; Kawarazuka et al., 2017; Santos, 2015 . Visibilizing gender roles In addition to visibilizing women’s productive labor, a major part of gender-as-object research in fisheries and conservation also aims to visibilize women’s re-negotiation of reproductive labor within the household. Williams 2019 articulates the need for this line of inquiry by comparing the gendered division of labor between women and men, their access to resources and capital, daily and seasonal work patterns, and the amount of work that is paid and unpaid. Various articles indeed describe the intra-household dynamics of fishing communities and what factors change the division of labor and power to make decisions within Barclay et al., 2018; Salmi & Sonck-Rautio, 2018 , as well as the way these dynamics control resource use and practice (de la Torre-Castro et al., 2017; Lau & Scales, 2016; Uc-Espadas et al., 2018 . Locke et al. 2017 describe the way that women and men renegotiate power asymmetries within households with implications for innovation of food security adaptation. The renegotiation of such asymmetries includes changes in men and women’s attitudes towards each other’s ability to make decisions and perform tasks that might break the binary between the productive and reproductive (such as going to market). Similarly, Kawarazuka et al. 2019 , who define reproductive labor as child-rearing and food-provisioning roles, examine how women in fishing communities in Kenya Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 22
reinterpret these roles into ones of mutual aid and sources of social connection. This enables them to go beyond their assigned gendered household reproductive roles and sometimes even gaining access to productive fishing activity. Dismantling binaries In visibilizing women’s productive work and rendering negotiable the reproductive labor they are socialized into performing, gender-as-object research in fisheries and marine conservation works to dismantle the binary in which men = productive, women = reproductive. By dismantling the binary, gender-as-object research has been able to bring to light women’s food production; their labor as fishers, gleaners, traders, and processors; and the work they put into environmental and intra-community care and transformation. Additionally, increasing the recognition and negotiation of who performs productive and reproductive labor changes the bargaining power of who has access to fisheries, ecological resources, and environmental spaces Pedroza-Gutiérrez, 2019 . Therefore, gender-as-object research also manages to highlight the gendered power dynamics of intra-household and intra-community resource use and management. Thus, such research also works to disrupt the neat binary of women on land, men at sea – a “limiting metaphor” that, again, is seen to invisibilizes women’s labor Alonso-Población & Niehof, 2019; Frangoudes et al., 2019 – in order to improve the recognition of both genders as equal stakeholders in the management of each environment (e.g., Wosu, 2019 . For example, Lau and Scales’ 2016 study of women as oyster fishers in the Gambia complicates stereotypical perspectives of women’s work tied to land and men’s work tied to the sea. They show that although sea-based fishing is more arduous than land-based maid work, women find it more dignified and ringing true to their identity. Some women fishers are quoted saying: “The sea is where we originated from is where our parents harvest, so it is in our blood” Lau & Scales, 2016, p. 142 . This suggests that management of marine resources not only has to consider both genders’ fishing grounds, but also their spiritual relationships with the sea. In contrast, di Ciommo 2007 shows that men who identify with the masculine role of providing father and fisher - a role that ties them to the sea - also have desires and ambitions that go beyond the marine environment. While they wish for better fishing conditions, they also aspire to better school transportation for their children on land. Deb et al. 2015 further complicate stereotypical roles for women and men by describing how women may derive power and autonomy in their separation from the ocean. They describe a community in Bangladesh in which men go out to fish seasonally. The men’s periodic absence from the fishing village allows for women to restructure the division of labor within their community, renegotiating gendered norms that Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 23
normally confine them to reproductive roles, and allows them to “renew social relations with the wider society, and to reconstruct the socio-cultural meanings of their world” Deb et al., 2015, p. 6 . Masculinity The majority of gender-as-object research in the marine domain focuses on the role of women, or the division of roles for women and men. There is a risk involved here of – paradoxically – reinforcing the male/female divide when gender studies in marine science are de facto reduced to “women’s studies.” This can obscure questions of masculinity and the role of men (as well as trans, queer, and other non-binary gender roles) in fisheries and other marine-related practices. Although more at the margins of gender-as-object research (and partially found by snowball and purposive sampling), some studies have focused more specifically on the role of men and the multiple forms and performances of masculinity, particularly in the context of fisheries Fabinyi, 2007; Gustavsson & Riley, 2020; Pauwelussen, 2021; Power, 2008 . These studies have, for example, shown how “being male” in a fisheries context is not static, but instead shaped in social and cultural settings. They show that different forms and performances of masculinity reflect and manifest in different embodied practices Bull, 2009, p. 461; Gustavsson & Riley, 2020, p. 198 , which multiplies masculinity beyond the common assumption of a “hegemonic masculinity” Connell, 1995 . For example, Power’s 2008 study with fish harvesters in Newfoundland and Labrador shows how experience of risk by fishermen is not only dynamic and culturally embedded, but also gendered along situated practices and expectations that shape in different ways what it takes and means to be a man. Anthropological studies of compressor dive fishing in Southeast Asia and the Caribbean have shown how such a risky practice is related to the masculine qualities locally ascribed to those who dare and endure Fabinyi, 2007; Halim, 2002 . Ethnographies by Mallon Andrews 2021 , Ota 2006 , and Pauwelussen 2021 show that such masculine qualities go beyond the idea of a “strong self-contained man,” and involve a process of becoming fluid and responsive to currents and spirits. Concluding In conclusion, gender-as-object research in fisheries and marine conservation shows that gender is not a fixed socio-environmental category. In visibilizing gendered division of labor, previously obscured productive roles women occupy, and how women negotiate reproductive work, this research has brought to light that gender, along with its associated binaries, can be improved, negotiated, complicated, and transformed. While the majority of these studies have focused on women’s roles, there appears to be a persistent yet more Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 24
marginal interest in the different roles of men and the various kinds of masculinity this may entail. Gender as epistemology As mentioned in previous sections, gender-as-epistemology studies have addressed gendered and hegemonic systems of thinking and conceptualizing the world. Such hegemonic thinking may be referred to as modernist, Western, patriarchal, or capitalist or – in relation to Black and Indigenous scholarship – as colonial and racist patterns of understanding the world Descola & Pálsson, 1996; Frazier, 2016; Gibson-Graham, 1996; Haraway, 1988; Latour, 1993 . In particular, feminist and queer theory has interrogated
binary systems of thinking that are deeply ingrained in Western) modern thought. This shows most prominently in the divides between human and nature, male and female (see Box 1 and Box 2 , but also to other binaries such as mind and body, human and animal, and reason and emotion. In response, they have proposed relational, hybrid, queer, and affective approaches that illuminate situated practices and underground currents that destabilize and inverse said binaries González-Hidalgo & Zografos, 2020; Haraway, 2016; Mortimer-Sandilands & Erickson, 2010; Woelfle-Erskine, 2022 . We found that relatively few articles in our literature review address the epistemological assumptions and approaches underlying knowledge practices in fisheries, conservation, and gender research in marine social sciences. To find the studies we refer to in this subsection, we had to venture beyond the literature that we found through our keyword search. They were more scattered and at the margin of the gender and the sea citational canon. Questioning hegemonic approaches to thinking gender Some of the gender-as-epistemology research in marine social science interrogates the ubiquity of Western worldviews, knowledge, and value systems in marine science and policy, and its consequences for how relations of gender, community, and kinship are organized. For example, Baker-Médard 2017 shows how conservation projects in Madagascar assume decision-making in fisheries to be a public affair, and set up community consultation accordingly for marine protected area planning. Thereby, these programs by default exclude women and their actual role in the informal networks of community-based decision-making (cf. Pauwelussen, 2015 for an Indonesian example). Gender-as-epistemology may overlap with gender-as-object research in how it interrogates concepts of male and female in relation to fishing and the sea. However, and Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 25
interestingly, gender-as-epistemology studies have also scrutinized how certain feminist approaches may perpetuate Western and heteronormative stereotypes of male and female roles. For example, gender studies in fisheries have made visible the important reproductive roles of women as fishwives, mothers, caretakers, and fish processors to complement the productive roles of male fishing (see previous subsection: “Visibilizing gender roles”). Yet others have pointed out how such female reproductive roles are actually
culturally constructed, and that the emphasis on reproductive roles can make invisible female roles in the productive realm of fishing. Without reflection on such biases in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, fisheries research may reinforce the notion of fisheries as naturally a masculine domain (see previous subsection: “Dismantling binaries”). Deb et al. 2015 go a step further by showing that the productive/reproductive distinction itself is a “Western” construct that obscures vital “non-productive” activities like religious rituals. They show how Bangladeshi fisherwomen, through such non-productive relations, find empowerment in a mostly male-dominated society. Gender-as-epistemology has also enabled critical reflection on feminist development discourses of “women emancipation” or “community empowerment” in marine science and policy. Women empowerment projects and policies in conservation and fisheries are often built on Western or colonial assumptions of what emancipation, community, and empowerment is and requires Baker-Médard, 2017; Baker-Médard & Sasser, 2020 . For example, Baker-Médard and Sasser 2020 describe how Malagasi ethics of life are firmly based on kinship networks. However, Western environmental groups in Madagascar consider the expansion of kinship as a barrier to good marine conservation, and assume Malagasi communities as culturally resistant or unable to do so. They mobilize a “feminist” intervention of women empowerment that focuses on birth control in order to stabilize population growth and protect nature. Their study exemplifies how notions of gender equality can be harmful when utilized to promote Malthusian logics of conservation through population control over local ethics and relations of kinship and care. A few marine studies scrutinize the very categorization of male and female in doing gender research. Some researchers studying gender from a development perspective have put forward the argument that men and women within fishing communities are not homogeneous groups, and that their identities are subject for negotiation (e.g., Graziano et al., 2018; Rohe et al., 2018; Weeratunge et al., 2010 . For example, Kawarazuka et al. 2017 critique the categorization of gender roles in fishing communities as dominant masculinities and vulnerable femininities. Instead, they argue that gender relations are highly context dependent, and that gendered power relations are “generated, changed, or Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 26
sustained through everyday practices of both cooperation (and joint interests) and conflict (and individual interests), among men and women in different social positions” Kawarazuka et al., 2017, p. 208 . As noted in the previous section, we had to move beyond the keyword search to find more marine-related publications that critically examine the very terms masculine and feminine in how they are performed and embodied in different ways. Gustavsson and Riley 2020 shed light on multiple forms of femininity (see also Kopelent-Rehak, 2022 . In writing about women’s fishing lives in Welsh small-scale fisheries, they argue that the social category of “woman” is highly subjective, mutable, and negotiable, by showing how fisherwomen navigate their social conditions to accumulate different kinds of resources and mobility. Also insightful is the ethnographic work of Bull 2009 on the shifting masculinities of recreational fishers in rural English settings, and how fishers themselves narrate and manage their masculine identities (see also Alonso, 2022 for a Vietnamese case). Likewise, ethnographies of risky dive fishing Fabinyi, 2017; Mallon-Andrews, 2021; Pauwelussen, 2022 describe male diving bodies as becoming fluid, leaky, and affective. This problematizes the common dualism between the “fluid” qualities of the feminine versus the “solid” quality of the masculine (cf. Connell, 1995; Neimanis, 2017 . This current of research resonates with queer ecologies in its efforts to theorize gender beyond static categories of “male” and “female.” As such, feminist and queer studies of femininity and masculinity are not only gender-as-object studies but also gender-as-epistemology studies, as they contribute to rethinking dominant ways of conceptualizing and ordering human-ocean relations into gender categories. Rethinking modern divides in marine studies Gender-as-epistemology does not necessarily have gender as its object of research. Rather, it takes feminist or queer theory as a springboard to highlight epistemological biases in how we think and conceptualize the world. For example, scrutinizing the nature/culture divide in marine studies sheds light on the ways in which modern science and society have framed the ocean as either a domain of wild “nature” or of “culture” and imagination, and how this has been and still is imposed onto marine sites and peoples Helmreich, 2011; Lowe, 2007; Probyn, 2016 . For example, Baker and Constant 2020 highlight epistemological biases and injustice in marine conservation. The authors show how marine conservation involves multiple and partially connected ways of knowing the sea. However, as marine conservation gives more credibility and power to (natural) science, other knowledge systems and collective ways of understanding the world are systemically neglected. A similar line of argumentation is found in Todd 2014 in fisheries Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 27
management in Canada, and Pauwelussen and Verschoor 2017 on coral conservation in Indonesia. Knott et al. 2022 make a case for feminist more-than-human scholarship to be included in fisheries science to disrupt persistent human/animal and nature/culture binaries that sustain the capitalist and colonial exploitation of marine life as resource. Although these studies do not specifically analyze asymmetries between genders, they build on traditions of feminist thinking about environmental and epistemic justice in science and technology studies, political ecology, more-than-human geography and affiliated scholarship. For example, in Eating the Ocean, Probyn 2016 uses feminist methodologies like embodied ethnography, and queer approaches like thinking across sources and disciplines, to question persistent biases in mainstream academic understanding of the term “sustainability” pertaining to human-fish relations. Another example is Neimanis’ 2021 work on marine pollution narratives and the dumping of chemical weapons. She argues that how we use and think of the ocean (how we imagine its usefulness) is mediated by gendered structures of power and knowledge. According to Neimanis, thinking of the ocean as universally passive and impartial is a manifestation of the conquering, patriarchal gaze that Haraway 1988 referred to as the “God Trick.” This “God Trick” has environmental justice implications, as it leads to structural unaccountability for the consequences of marine dumping practices. Instead, Neimanis argues for thinking of the ocean in terms of kinship, stories, and survival. It is worth noting that there are a variety of studies that take inspiration from Black and Indigenous feminist and queer theory to explore ways to think, write, and do human-sea relations that disrupt or defy modern divides of nature versus culture, human versus animal, body versus mind, and reason versus emotion. Instead, they develop radically different ways of knowing, imagining, and conceptualizing human-sea relations. Notably, Gumbs’ dream-like “Undrowned” 2020 combines poetry, Black feminism, and affective observation of marine mammals to reflect on what it means to be “human.” Feminist and queer methodologies have inspired marine studies to go beyond the cognitive to include affective, tactile, and emotional ways of knowing sea, currents and marine creatures Hayward, 2010; Merchant, 2011; Pauwelussen, 2021 . In this, such studies resonate and sometimes entwine with Indigenous marine and fisheries science and philosophy based on relational understandings of the world, in which humans and other beings co-exist through relation of kinship and responsibility (e.g., Ingersoll, 2016; Todd, 2014 . Especially at the intersection of feminist theory, anthropology, science and technology studies, and Indigenous philosophy, some recent studies have taken in the feminist concept of “care” Parreñas, 2018; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017 to put central relations of responsibility in Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 28
marine restoration, fisheries, and wildlife management Hörst, 2021; Norgaard et al., 2018; Probyn et al., 2020 . Gender as subject Similar to the “gender-as-epistemology” studies, we found only a small number of researchers through our keyword search who explicitly addressed gender-as-subject. With this, we mean a reflexive consideration by authors of their positionality as researchers (gendered and otherwise) and how that affects their studies. It can also refer to the critical reflection on the gendered and political position of marine social science vis-à-vis other sciences and knowledge practices. Finally, we see gender-as-subject research reflected in the way authors and researchers acknowledge the situatedness and partiality of their academic product, and may take responsibility for the intersecting relations of power they foreground or render invisible. In other words, it puts back the marine researcher, author, and their communities as responsive, socially embedded, and accountable actors in knowledge production. Researchers’ positionality Although it is still rather exceptional in the wider field of marine social science, there appears to be a growing engagement with the feminist (and Indigenous) practice of stating positionalities – the privileges and knowledges they bring into the research and interpretation of data (e.g., Norgaard et al., 2018; Pauwelussen, 2021; Reid et al., 2021; Waitt et al., 2020 . Waitt et al. 2020 , for instance, write: …the researcher gained privileged access by how male participants positioned the female researcher as an unthreatening “novice” or “granddaughter,” specifically showing, and teaching fishing techniques and conditions. ... In addition, we acknowledge the knowledge related in this paper is fashioned by an additional two researchers who had a background in fisheries research to help make sense of participants’ experiences. Furthermore, one of us brings first-hand experience of the gendered and ethnic dynamics of certain recreational fishing spots in her own experiences as a woman with connections to recreation fishing and Anglo ancestry (p. 710 . In another example, Pauwelussen 2022 indicates how her own gender may have affected her ability to build trust and gain access to cyanide dive fishers, in comparison to Fabinyi’s 2007 preceding ethnography with similar fishing communities:
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My gender has affected my interaction with dive fishers – all men. In contrast to Fabinyi 2007 , I was excluded from post-dive drinking parties, or joining dives with men outside the intimate circle of my host families. However, being a woman was also an asset in gaining trust among fishers, through my friendship and adoptive kinship with female relatives. This enhanced the openness and informality of the interviews conducted, and may account for fishers showing a more fragile version of themselves too. … Whereas compressor diving was considered a men’s job, too dangerous for women, my ambiguous positionality as female outsider and licensed scuba diver made my participation publicly accepted (p. 1717 1718 . Such articulations of the embodiment and subjectiveness of both the researcher and researched allows for more multiple, relational, and non-dualistic representations of gender. An explicit reflection on positionality also acknowledges that all knowledge claims are socially situated Haraway, 1988; Harding, 1992 , and that making explicit the situation in which knowledge is produced stimulates an ethics of care between the researcher and researched, and arguably enhances the internal validity of the claim. Positionality of marine social science Another way in which gender-as-subject research may enhance reflexivity is by reflecting on the position of gender research within the field of marine social science. In this context, Frangoudes et al. 2019 have pointed out the language bias and issues of access to scientific publications: Western researchers have for a long time defined the standard of what counts as publishable research, which predominantly includes English language standards. These barriers are then further compounded by open access fees, which are often beyond the capacity of women researchers outside and inside of Western institutions to afford (p. 247 . Indeed, the publication practices of the marine social science community perpetuate – albeit probably unwillingly – structural relations of privilege entrenched in colonial historical relations. Intersectionality The reflexivity of gender-as-subject research also pertains to the need for intersectional analysis, that considers gender as not the, but as one among several, axes of power asymmetries through which inequities are sustained in ocean research and policy. Power Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 30
dynamics exist between the nation-state and fishing community Østmo & Law, 2018; Walker & Robinson, 2009 , migrants and native fishers, domestic and industrial fisheries Waitt & Hartig, 2005 , the researcher and the researched Lehman, 2013 , humans and other animals Gumbs 2020 , and Black and White coastal community privileges and vulnerabilities Guerin, 2019 . However, most gender-as-object studies we reviewed do not – or only minimally – engage with power asymmetries beyond gender. One reason for this may be that the dominant strands of developmental research in conservation and fisheries projects tend to look at the hyperlocal, focusing on the site for gender development or community to participate in conservation, as also pointed out by Baker-Médard 2017 . In this practice of “siting,” fishing communities are mapped out and the surrounding ecosystems are described in detail (e.g., Bradford & Katikiro, 2019; Fortnam et al., 2019 . Within the hyperlocal, gender can very easily be the primary axis of power, because broader political economic asymmetries are less clearly at work and immediate at a smaller scale Mountz & Hyndman, 2006 . For example, Lau and Scales 2016 center their argument on gender subjectivities and a fluid notion of gender identity experienced by women oyster harvesters in the Gambia that is also influenced by class and ethnicity. While this provides a unique insight into the ways gender, class, and ethnicity interact at a local scale, what is less clear is how such gender politics intersect within broader political and economic factors, such as gender-based migration, sex work, and racial and state-sanctioned violence. Our point here is not that gender studies in marine science should always take all power relations into their analysis, as this would be an infeasible project. We also do not discredit the quality of the works referenced above. Rather, we point out a lack of intersectional analysis in marine social science more generally to complement these works. This serves to also indicate the relevance of engaging “gender and the sea studies” more with critical race theory, standpoint feminism, and anticolonial studies, among others. To do so, marine social science would also benefit from critical reflection on practices of citation in gender studies. In line with this, gender-as-subject research takes responsibility for how it builds on and weaves together different voices and expertise through politics of citation and acknowledges the intellectual work of authors that have been sidelined or overlooked. Thereby, intersectionality also feeds back into how marine social science as a field of study manages to meaningfully engage with Black, queer, and Indigenous feminisms across different disciplines (see section “Gender as epistemology”).
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Gender as political project In the section titled “A typology of gender research,” we defined “gender-as-political-project” research as works that strive to expand and advance feminist and queer politics through research (cf. Holzberg, 2017 . We also pointed out how gender-as-object research – the majority of marine social science – may be interpreted as gender-as-political-project. In line with our analysis in the two previous sections, we found few studies doing so through our keyword search. This is not surprising. Critical reflection on epistemology (how we think and conceptualize human-sea and gender relations, and whose knowledge and expertise is taken into account) and positionality (the role and accountability of science and scientists in producing gendered knowledge about human-sea relations) are both key dimensions of addressing the root causes of structural gender inequities in a marine context. Because of the interconnection between the three aforementioned dimensions of gender research and gender-as-political-project research, we present our findings here differently. We selected three exemplary publications that combine different dimensions of gender research to build up to a political project. By giving more space to their narratives, we aim to illustrate how the different dimensions can interconnect and support each other in gender research. Example 1 Masculinity, race and recreational fishing in Australia Waitt et al.’s 2020 study engages with recreational fishing in Australia. The authors use feminist methodological approaches such as sensory ethnography to include different ways of knowing beyond the cognitive. This allows the authors to follow and illuminate different fishers’ embodied relation to fish, fishing in Australia, and the coast. The authors also explicitly state their positionalities – the privileges and knowledge biases each of them brings into this work. Using feminist methods that prioritize subjectivity and embodiment, including their own, the authors highlight how gender relations in recreational fishing intersect with racist structures in Australian society. This produces a power asymmetry that privileges white male fishers over Asian ones, and shifts blame for “wrong” fishing practices onto the latter. The article then links the dominance of white masculinity in recreational fishing to racial and gendered imaginaries of coastlines in Australia, embedded in a nostalgic notion of the “good Australian life” Waitt et al., 2020, p. 7 . The authors make it clear that even though recreational fishing regulations are seemingly gender- and colour-blind, the acceptance of how people of colour fish and care for fish is still determined by how white or immigrant bodies move – and are expected to move – in these fishing spaces and in the country. By making explicit the dominance of whiteness in Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 32
Australia, the authors open up space for careful assessment of how anti-immigrant sentiments and white nostalgia is projected onto everyday outdoor spaces. This is an essential step towards making space for the experiences of marine nature for marginalized people. Example 2 Critical reflection on “women’s empowerment” in Madagascar Baker-Médard & Sasser 2020 use a feminist political ecology approach to explore structural inequities in women’s empowerment initiatives by international conservation non-governmental organizations NGOs) in Madagascar. The authors note that conservation program NGOs mobilize Western neo-Malthusian logic (blaming ecological degradation on population growth) in presenting women’s fertility and reproduction as a threat to save vulnerable ecosystems. This, in turn, rationalizes certain interventions of population control to achieve better conservation outcomes. At the same time, it ignores wider capitalist and colonial systems of exploitation that have led to ecological degradation in the first place. The authors show how Western women empowerment narratives here displace situated ethics of kinship and cultural continuance. By interrogating the epistemologies upon which gender and “women empowerment” is constructed in marine conservation, the article shows the risk of reducing “gender” to “women” in conservation development literature and interventions. The article lays bare the power asymmetries and resulting instruments of control that undergird conservation and gender programs often implemented by Global North NGOs onto Global South communities. Example 3 Masculinities and Karuk Indigenous fisheries Norgaard et al.’s 2018 article exemplifies how all four dimensions of gender research can come together. First, it focuses on gender as an object of study – in this case masculinities. The article then considers how Indigenous masculinities are impacted and changed though broader systemic and epistemic inequities. To do so, the authors explore social, cultural, and ecological relationships in Karuk communities using a Native feminist theoretical framework: Native feminists assert that colonialism and decolonization are gendered processes, yet attention to how colonialism organizes gendered identities and as well as the structure of gender performances by Native and non-Native people has barely begun Norgaard et al., 2018, p. 109 . The authors push back against a binary understanding of gender and understand that gender is entangled with nature and culture and mediated by settler colonialism. The Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 33
relations between nature, culture, gender, and colonial violence are implicated in the central question of the paper: What happens to Karuk masculinities when there are no fish? ... What is the role of the natural environment in their constructions of masculinity, the operation of colonial violence, and how Karuk men resist racism and colonialism? Norgaard et al., 2018, p. 99 In order to address this question within the contexts of settler colonialism, the authors reject the notion of nature as a passive background for resource extraction. Instead, they propose to see (marine) nature as relational, and a site of care. Centering nature as a site for care and highlighting care relations as part of masculinity, the authors make space for Indigenous conceptions of masculinity that takes in responsibility and resistance to colonial systems of organizing human-fish relations. In addition, the authors explicitly detail their positionalities. They pay particular attention to what knowledge they are bringing to the table through their different positionalities – biologist, traditional fisherman or non-Native sociologist – and how this affected their relationship to research participants and to each other: The authors spent many hours in conversation during the period [they] conducted interviews...These conversations were important opportunities to discuss relationships between themes and bridge gaps between Reed’s understandings as a Karuk insider and Norgaard’s understandings as a non-Native academic Norgaard et al., 2018, p. 102 . These methodological reflections contribute to the readers’ understanding of multiple knowledges that shaped the study and enhances the validity and accountability of the way they portray Indigenous perspectives and practices pertaining to gender and fishing. Using a Native feminist framework, the authors shed light on the continuation of colonial power and the apparatus of colonial ecological destruction as instrumental in Karuk men’s struggles to construct themselves as men (who fish). They turn their research into a gender-as-political-project by explicitly connecting Indigenous sovereignty struggles to gender struggles; towards the end, the article discusses the ways that fishermen are engaging in activism for the fish and restructuring masculinities in that way. This paves a way for alternative gender futures that supports Indigenous self-determination.
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Discussion Identifying gaps and risks involved for tackling ocean inequities The lack of critical examination of epistemological assumptions, practices, and positions related to gender and the ocean can underexpose how this field continues to think in binaries or oppositional categories. While ordering the world into binaries comes (as with any conceptual simplification) with an advantage of clarity, when binaries are taken for granted, they can obscure the breadth and fluidity of human relationships with the ocean. This can have harmful effects, when such established systems of thought infuse policy decisions about conservation, fisheries, and other marine resource use, and impose separations and hierarchies (between male and female, nature and culture, human and animal, mind and body) and exclude the relations in-between. Moreover, as shown in the Malagasi example from Baker-Médard and Sasser 2020 , a failure to think beyond received epistemological biases in marine and fisheries science can lead to gender approaches actually exacerbating gendered inequities and perpetuate colonial relations between western programs and traditional practices Harris et al., 2012; Knott et al., 2022 . Gender-as-epistemology and gender-as-subject approaches can help marine social science to address structural dimensions of gender inequities in a marine context. First, it shows gender biases and power imbalances in how reality is understood and conceptualized and what knowledge is considered valid. Second, it stimulates reflexivity and responsibility in how researchers do their marine social science from differently situated positions in relation to others. Engagement with multiple dimensions of gender research thereby allows for a broadening and deepening of data analysis in marine social science, and advances the kinds of political projects that marine social science can engage in, taking into account intersecting power asymmetries at multiple scales. Below we will discuss some of the risks of not taking into account gender-as-epistemology, and subsequently gender-as-subject research, and how doing so may enhance marine social science’s capacity to better engage with and contribute to ocean equity. A plea for gender-as-epistemology research Engaging critically with gender-as-epistemology serves to interrogate biases and ontological presuppositions underlying knowledge practices. One of the primary ways in which feminist theory has done so in environmental research more broadly is through critical reflection on the intersection between male/female, nature/culture, and other modern divides (see section: “A typology of gender research”). From our analysis, we Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 35
derive that relatively few articles in marine social science research engage with gender-as-epistemology, and that this is an as yet underdeveloped debate. The main risk involved is that marine social science may unwittingly reinforce such divides in marine scholarship and praxis. We identified three ways in which this plays out and where we see room for feminist theory to advance and deepen analysis and critical reflection pertaining to gender equity:
First, gender studies in marine social science that use an anthropology of development studies approach tend to describe how social and cultural practices related to fishing and aquaculture are gendered, yet are less focused on the environmental conditions in which this takes place or the human-nature relations this entails. As a consequence, the marine environment and its material and more-than-human agencies of animals, waves, or weather becomes a background for social action to take place. In this line of study, we find comprehensive works that have illuminated gendered patterns of fishing livelihoods. For example, Stacey et al. 2019 reviewed interventions for creating sustainable, alternative livelihoods in coastal fisheries communities in Indonesia, Williams et al. 2019 reported on impacts of fisheries and aquaculture production on gender equity, and Pedroza-Gutiérrez 2019 discussed gendered fishing practices in Lake Chapala, Mexico, highlighting women’s essential labor in the bargaining of fish. Without denying the importance and value of these analyses, they are usually situated in the scientific tradition of describing social dynamics as taking place against a natural background that has no active role to play in these dynamics. We see potential in complementing and enhancing this strand of research with taking in the “natural” as inherently part of the “social,” by including the dynamic interactions between human and non-human bodies and agencies in gender relations. In this line, Knott et al. 2022 make a plea to a deeper engagement with feminist more-than-human scholarship marine science.
Second, the bulk of gender studies in marine social science conceptualizes “nature” (the ocean, fish, reefs, etc.) as resource. This falls in line with the strong tradition of fisheries studies and development and institutional approaches to its management. Conceptualized as resource, marine and coastal natures are used for different labor practices, accessed by different genders (e.g., Bennett, 2005; Weeratunge et al., 2010; Wosu, 2019 . The ocean tends to be relegated to an environmental background where resources can be gleaned, and cultural relationships with the ocean are constructed upon differential access to these resources. As a result, gender studies within marine social science often focus on women’s negative cultural relations with nature. For example, Kleiber et al. 2015 discusses how culture mediates who has access to nature or marine resources. In this portrayal, culture Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 36
limits women’s interaction with nature and is in opposition with affording women with a more expansive set of interactions with the ocean than men. However, too much emphasis on constructing the ocean as “resource” can be problematic because many communities that researchers study may not share such instrumental conceptualization of human-ocean relations. The very reduction of marine lifeworlds to a set of resources to be monetary valued and exploited may be considered offensive and harmful in lay and Indigenous understanding of the ocean, which should inform gender analysis in these contexts. As Santos 2015 has noted, rural producer identities are “deep rooted” not from their gendered lot in resource use, but through the way culturally embedded environmental relationships are sustained. While we do not argue against conceptualizing oceans as resource per se, we do emphasize the need for reflection and accountability regarding what kinds of human-ocean relations such conceptualization foregrounds and excludes, and what kind of exploitation it may perpetuate Knott et al., 2022 . Also, scholarship on gender equity in human-sea relations requires making room for other cultural and relational ways of knowing and engaging with the sea outside of resource use and exploitation for economic benefit.
Third, within marine social science, while there are still studies that subscribe to a binary notion of gender, there have been moves to consider gender as a fluid relation and embodiment (notably Knott & Gustavsson’s 2022 special issue). For Gustavsson and Riley 2020 , masculinities are multiple and can transform “not only in relations to femininities, but also in relation to other forms of masculinities” (p. 3 . Patriarchal orderings of power relations occur not only through the dominance of men over women, but also between men; a fisher’s social standing has only partly to do with whether he goes out to sea. It also involves heteronormative imaginations of what he needs to remain in fishing: rationality, health, and an able, cis body Gustavsson & Riley, 2020; see also Alonso, 2022 . It also helps to cast the net of gender analysis wider, to take in the intersection of gender with racist and colonial structures in science and society. For example, Norgaard et al.’s 2018 study shows how gender relations are shaped not just in male/female differences, but rather in Indigenous fisher’s relation to colonial practices and institutions. By exploring gender beyond the male/female binary, marine social science can illuminate and address power relations that govern or transform the expression and embodiment of gender in relation to the sea. However, while there have been several insightful attempts to dismantle the male/female or masculine/feminine binary, these are as yet marginal to gender studies in marine social Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 37
science and policy. In particular, in our review selection we have not found any papers within the gender-and-the-sea canon that explicitly engage with queerness or gender identities that lie beyond male/female. This is surprising as many maritime communities in Oceania, Indonesia, the Indian subcontinent, and Africa (where much of the gender and fisheries research have been conducted) have historically had genderqueer traditions (see Graham, 2010 . Exploring gender diversity more radically could shed light on different standpoints on gender roles, different kinship models within and between fishing communities, and also consider more-than-human kinship.
Fourth, our review shows a tension between mainstream gender studies based in modern thinking of progress and individual empowerment embedded in a Western enlightenment tradition, and, on the other hand, Indigenous or otherwise alternative ethics and world views that stress values of relationality and reciprocity. Feminist approaches embedded in a white and Western political-philosophical tradition may paradoxically approach and advocate female empowerment in a way that misaligns with or even sidelines the political and emancipatory visions and ambitions of the very women these approaches aim to “empower” Baker-Medard & Sasser, 2020 . The danger lies in the perpetuation of the colonial “white savior” complex in which “white” feminism of the liberated West aims to empower women perceived to be stuck in traditions. Indeed, such cultural traditions can then be seen as hindrance to gender equity. For example, in the case of community conservation of sea turtles traditional gender roles and responsibilities have been described as a hindrance for effective turtle conservation. To play their part in conservation, communities may be considered to need education to change their traditional, gendered habits of resource use and consumptions Abd Mutalib et al., 2013 . When writing about gender and fisheries, Frocklin et al. 2014 similarly position traditional culture as opposing progress. In the described case, the configuration of gender relations between women and men and the fishing culture resulting from these relations is leading to decreasing fish stock. The study posits that conservation can be better managed through changing the perceptions of women and men and their traditional gender relations. While we do not intend to take a position on whether such changes are needed or not, we do want to stress the importance of critical examination of underlying assumptions of progress versus tradition as a normative basis to intervene in and replace existing ways of organizing human-sea relations. Moreover, in contrast to these portrayals, women and men in some communities have self-organized and collectivized through more traditional gender roles to build community and protect and manage ecosystems in the face of destruction from Western industrial fishing fleets Dalla Costa & Chilese, 2015 . Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 38
A plea for gender-as-subject research As described in the section on “Gender as subject,” we identified three ways in which gender-as-subject research is carried out, albeit at the margins of marine social science scholarship: 1 as positional reflexivity of the researcher and their relation to others in and after research, 2 as critical reflection on the positionality and privilege of marine social science versus other knowledge practices, and 3 as the intersectional awareness of gender and feminist critique in relation to other political and emancipatory critiques (e.g., related to anti-racism and decolonization). As noted, we see a structural lack of such gender-as-subject reflexivity in mainstream marine social science and gender studies in particular. For our analysis we had to draw mostly from papers that we found beyond the keyword search. Often, these works may not even identify as belonging to a community of marine social science scholarship, but rather speak to debates around gender, decolonization, positionality, or intersectionality (among others) through a marine or aquatic case. Gender is not an isolated axis of power through which injustices are perpetuated. To effectively address and tackle ocean inequities, marine social science approaches need to develop an intersectional awareness and approach that takes in interlinked asymmetries of gender, race, class, and colonial relations, amongst others. Considering gender as a relation and not as a category is essential here to engage in such intersectional inquiry. As Frangoudes et al. 2019 put it: “We have gone from documenting women in isolation to understanding the gendered relationships that shape women’s and men’s lives, but the reporting is still framed around the missing perspectives of women.” We find further evidence to support Frangoudes et al.’s claim in the dominance of gender-as-object papers (as pointed out in the section: “Gender as object in marine social science”) that focus on the “role of women in fisheries.” There is much to be gained from infusing gender studies in marine social science with more radical intersectional analysis, which is increasingly recognized but not yet sufficiently developed in marine research and publication. Recent scholarship has indeed stressed that dismantling binary thinking is not enough, and pointed out the importance of understanding intersecting issues of class and race within the scope of gender analysis Barclay et al., 2019; Kleiber et al., 2019 . From recognizing that there is a need for this, a next step is to foster a collective ability and responsibility to do such rigorous intersectional analysis. We posit that the singular focus on gender resonates with a collective lack of consideration of researchers’ positionality in marine social science. Of the articles we reviewed, few Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 39
researchers explicitly acknowledge their particular politics, histories, and ontological traditions in which their research and analysis is situated. According to feminist science and technology STS scholars, acknowledging positionality is important because our particular knowledges can drive hypotheses, research questions, methods, outputs, and analyses, which can have significant impact on who the research serves and can have environmental justice implications Harding, 2009; TallBear, 2014 . The lack of acknowledgement of a dominant Western, white-centric positionality contributes to the singular focus on gender because Western, white feminism often gravitates to the logic of identification Alarcón, 1989 . To put it bluntly, Western researchers tend to focus singularly on gender issues because, due to their positionality, they identify with such a singular oppression absent of other oppressions such as race, class, and power dynamics between Global North researchers and Global South researched communities. This lack of consideration allows for Global North theories and methodologies on gender and fishing communities to be imported and applied without context to fishing communities in the Global South. This is directly related to the politics of citation and the application of theory as being universally applicable. For example, the influential works of Neis et al. 2005 and Nadel-Klein and Davis 1992 are based on working with fishing communities in Canada and Norway. Yet, their methods, findings, and conclusions have been applied to communities in Polynesia and Bangladesh Deb et al., 2014; Kleiber et al., 2015; Walker & Robinson, 2009 . These applications and methodologies are then amplified through citational communities within the field. Again, we do not deny the value of these works, or argue against the use of theory and citing works from elsewhere. However, we do wish to stress the importance of cultivating a praxis of care, reflection, and justification in how marine social science cites, where theories come from, and how they translate and may partially distort the realities it aims to capture. A plea for gender as political project research For gender research in marine social science to become a “political project,” and substantially and critically contribute to ocean equity, it needs to engage with the different dimensions of gender. Such gender-as-political project research is mindful of the way it orders and conceptualizes human-ocean relations, and in what ways epistemological assumptions and ways of knowing are foregrounded or excluded. It is also reflexive in the positionality of both researchers, researched, and the research or citation communities that it mobilizes and speaks to, and the inequities this may involve or produce. In order to tackle issues of ocean equity, we also suggest a “branching out” of gender research in marine social science to engage with scholarship on decolonization, anti-racism, and Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 40
more-than-human relations; to expand the scales of research from the household and community to the body, non-human animals, and corporations and nation-states; and to take seriously Indigenous and otherwise non-hegemonic ontologies and epistemic traditions. This will further enable marine social science to understand and find alternatives to gendered oppression that is also rooted in race, class, colonial relations and other intersecting social identities pertaining to fishing and conservation communities Donkersloot, 2012; Pictou, 2020 . To investigate and understand gender inequity in relation to other structural power asymmetries in both society and scientific practice requires engaging with our own positionalities and the historical and political contexts of our research settings. Doing this can broaden and open new ways to interpret data and the political projects gender research in marine social science can tackle.
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Appendix 1 List of articles reviewed and analyzed Table: Papers reviewed with the 4 gender dimensions framework, in alphabetical order Paper
Journal
Gender as
Gender as
Gender as
What political projects does
object
epistemology
subject
the paper engage in?
Y
N
N
Turtle conservation
Y
N
N
1 Gender asymmetries in
Abd Mutalib et al.,
Ocean and Coastal
2013
Management
Adusah-Karikari,
The Extractive
2015
Industries and
resource access in land,
Society
capital, education, health, and legal rights. 2 Unequal power relations and structures in global economy by oil extraction.
Attanapola et al.,
Gender, Place &
2013
Culture
N
Y
Y
Scrutinizes gender mainstreaming and addresses the power asymmetries between global North versus local organizations, stresses empowerment of women in their own terms.
Azmi et al., 2020
Gender, Place &
Y
N
N
Culture
Gender equity in resource access, roles, and distribution, women’s bargaining power within fishing households.
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 56
Baker & Constant,
Marine Policy
N
Y
N
2020
Epistemic justice and the way colonial, imperial, and other power asymmetries play out in what knowledges are more trusted, given more credibility within conservation science.
Baker-Médard, 2017
Society & Natural
Y
N
N
Resources
Scale, and specific ideas about ‘the local,’ as a metaphorical weapon in struggles for control over resources by non-local NGOs.
Baker-Médard &
Geoforum
Y
Y
N
Sasser, 2020
Addressing the power asymmetries between global North conservation organizations and the South and colonial violence in “women’s empowerment” programs.
Barclay et al., 2018
Maritime Studies
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access and distribution.
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 57
Bennett, 2005
Marine Policy
Y
N
N
Gender equity in education and institutional support, strengthening institutional capacity, data collection, economic diversification strategies.
Biswas, 2017
N/A (a report)
Y
N
N
Gender equity and women’s visibility in fishing.
Bradford & Katikiro,
Fisheries Research
Y
N
N
2019
Gender equity in resource access, roles, and distribution women’s visibility bargaining power in fishing.
Carver et al., 2020
Ocean and Coastal
N
Y
Y
Management
Power asymmetries and colonial logics embedded in the production, processing, and disposal of waste from deep sea mining.
Danso-Wiredu, 2018
Journal of Black
Y
N
N
Studies
Gender relations in upholding the hegemonic understanding of the market economy.
De la Torre-Castro
Marine Policy
Y
N
N
et al., 2017
Gender equity in resource access, roles, and distribution; women’s visibility in fishing.
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 58
Deb et al., 2015
Gender, Place &
Y
N
N
Culture
Gender equity in resource access, roles, and distribution, women’s bargaining power within fishing households.
Di Ciommo, 2007
Human Ecology
Y
N
N
Review
Pushing back tourism and real estate development and the way the community is labeled as extractivist reserve.
Diamond et al.,
Marine Policy
Y
Y
N
2003
Mainstreaming gender equity in coastal management through national governments, civil society, research, development programs, and funding.
Donkersloot, 2012
Gender, Place &
Y
N
N
Culture Fabinyi, 2007
Problematizes male power in rural Ireland.
Philippine Studies
Y
N
N
Power relations and illegal fishing in the Philippines.
Fortnam et al., 2019
Ecological
Y
N
N
Economics Frangoudes et al.,
Maritime Studies
Gender equity in resource access and distribution.
Y
Y
N
2018
1 Gender equity and women’s visibility in fishing 2 Hegemony of Western scientific research in fisheries management.
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 59
Frangoudes et al.,
Maritime Studies
Y
N
N
2019 Fröcklin et al., 2013
Gender equity and women’s visibility in fishing.
Ambio
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access, roles, and distribution, women’s bargaining power.
Fröcklin et al., 2014
PLOS One
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access, roles, and distribution, women’s bargaining power in (not over-) fishing.
Gaynor et al., 2016
Geoforum
Y
N
N
Deconstructing recreational fishing as a hyper masculine activity that depends on domination of both women and fish.
Gissi et al., 2018
Marine Policy
Y
N
N
Women’s access to power and visibility in ocean governance.
Godden, 2012
Research, action
Y
N
N
and policy:
Gender equity and women’s visibility in fishing.
Addressing the gendered impacts of climate change
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 60
Graziano et al., 2018
Ocean and Coastal
Y
N
N
Management
Gender equity in climate change adaptation, scrutinizes the effectiveness of gender mainstreaming when done by disaggregating data, incorporating language into policy documents, and inviting women to participate.
Gustavsson & Riley,
Maritime Studies
Y
N
N
2018
Gender equity in resource access, and distribution, women’s bargaining power (capital) in fishing communities.
Guvstavsson, 2020
Journal of Rural
Y
N
N
Studies Hanson, 2016
Gender equity and women’s visibility in fishing.
Gender, Place &
Y
Y
N
Culture
Addresses the asymmetries of transnational and neoliberal power that creates disadvantages for women and their economic activities.
Kawarazuka et al.,
Gender, Place &
2019
Culture
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access, roles, and distribution, women’s bargaining power within fishing communities.
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 61
Kleiber et al., 2015
Fish and Fisheries
Y
Y
N
Gender equity in resource access and distribution, women’s visibility in fisheries.
Kleiber et al., 2018
Maritime Studies
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access and distribution, women’s visibility in marine conservation.
Lau & Scales, 2016
Geoforum
Y
N
N
More dignified work for women in coastal spaces.
Lawless et al., 2019
Maritime Studies
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access and distribution.
Lawless et al., 2021
World Development
Y
N
N
Gender equity and women’s visibility in fishing.
Lehman, 2013
Environment and
Y
Y
Y
1 The power asymmetries
Planning D Society
between the researcher and
and Space
the researched. 2 The techniques of war imposed upon coastal communities by state power after a tsunami that influenced outcomes of everyday oppression.
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 62
Locke et al., 2017
Fish and Fisheries
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access, roles, and distribution, women’s bargaining power within fishing households.
McLeod et al., 2018
Marine Policy
Y
N
Y
Visibility of the climate activism of Pacific women on their own terms.
Nava Turgo, 2014
Philippine
Y
N
Y
Sociological Review
Making sense of masculinity and gender relations in small-scale fisheries.
Neimanis, 2021
Environment and
N
Y
N
Planning E Nature
Addresses settler narratives of pollution and militarization.
and Space Norgaard et al.,
Sociology of Race
2018
and Ethnicity
Y
Y
Y
1 Technology of non-Native management policies as causing colonial ecological violence 2 Indigenous sovereignty and continuance: how fishermen are engaging in activism and pave a way for alternative gender futures.
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 63
Parikh, 2020
Environment and
Y
Y
N
Addressing gendered power
Planning D Society
asymmetries and its causes:
and Space
the asymmetry between state and non-state actors vs. fisherpeople, and the colonial and neocolonial contexts and policies.
Pauwelussen, 2020
Maritime Studies
N
Y
Y
Epistemological and ontological diversity in studying ocean matters that are gendered.
Pedroza-Gutiérrez,
Marine Policy
Y
N
N
2019
Gender equity in resource access, roles, and distribution (ocean space and decision-making).
Pettersen, 2019
Maritime Studies
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access and work distribution, especially at the household level.
Picken & Ferguson,
Environment and
N
Y
N
Expanding feminist studies -
2014
Planning D Society
include feminist modes of
and Space
being and knowing in ocean spaces.
Porter, 2014
Asian Fisheries
Y
Y
N
Science
Gender equity and women’s visibility in fishing.
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 64
Pravalprukskul &
N/A (a report)
Y
N
N
Resurreccion, 2018
1 Gender equity and women’s visibility in fishing. 2 Dismantling economic structures that create gender inequities.
Probyn, 2014
Gender, Place &
N
Y
Y
Culture
Expanding feminist studies of fish and fishing beyond “invisible” or “visible” women; to articulate a feminist politics and epistemology within a more-than-human framework.
Rohe et al., 2018
Maritime Studies
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access and distribution
Salmi &
Maritime Studies
Y
N
N
Sonck-Rautio, 2018
Gender equity in resource access and distribution, women’s visibility in fisheries.
Santos, 2015
Marine Policy
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access, roles, and distribution, coastal communities’ access to social welfare and support.
Singh, 2018
Conservation and
N
Y
N
Society
More political focus on–and affective (non-objective) approach–biophysical processes.
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 65
Stacey et al., 2019
Maritime Studies
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access and distribution, women’s visibility in fisheries.
Szymkowiak, 2020
Marine Policy
Y
N
N
Gender equity in fishing households and communities.
Szymkowiak &
Frontiers in Marine
Rhodes-Reese,
Science
Y
N
N
Gender equity and women’s visibility in fishing.
2020 Teaiwa & Slatter,
International Studies
2013
Perspectives
N
N
Y
1 Reclaiming feminism for Pacific women 2 Demilitarization of the Pacific.
Uc-Espadas et al.,
Marine Policy
Y
N
N
2018
Gender equity in resource access, roles, and distribution, women’s bargaining power.
Veuthey & Gerber,
Global
N?
N
N
1 Unequal exchanges allow
2012
Environmental
Northern countries to import
Change
the bulk of shrimp products at low prices. 2 Indigenous sovereignty; against settler policies and government corruption that create loss of coastal ecosystems.
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 66
Waitt & Hartig, 2005
Gender, Place &
Y
Y
Y
Culture
Expanding the notion of masculinities within different worlds of fishing in Australia.
Waitt et al., 2020
Gender, Place &
N
Y
N
Culture
Dismantling the power relations involved in the dominance of the “white male fisher” in recreational fishing in relation to imaginations of Australian citizenship.
Walker & Robinson,
Gender, Place &
2009
Culture
Y
Y
N
Historically embedded and context-based gender equity work that includes multiple scales, knowledges, identities, and agencies.
Weeratunge et al.,
Fish and Fisheries
Y
N
N
2010
Addresses issues arising from gendered power asymmetries and its causes: markets and migration, capabilities and well-being, networks and identities, and governance and rights.
Williams, 2019
Maritime Studies
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access and distribution, women’s visibility in fisheries.
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 67
Williams et al., 2019
N/A (a report)
Y
N
N
Gender equity and women’s visibility in fishing.
Wosu, 2019
Marine Policy
Y
N
N
Gender equity in resource access and distribution.
Ocean Nexus Special Report A review of gender studies and feminist theory in and for marine social science 68