There is no wilful exclusion of women from aquaculture roles, but there is a generational issue of men avoiding the difficulty of having a more diverse workplace’.
This was the view of Lara Barazi, CEO of Kephalonian Fisheries in Greece, one of six panellists (three women and three men) at a Women in Aquaculture seminar at the EAS conference in Berlin this week.
Barazi said the industry has a lot of challenges, both image and actual’, and the workforce had to reflect these increasingly complex problems.
We have to be responsive to our stakeholders and to consumers, and our consumers are diverse, they are not just old, white men!’
Although gender imbalance is not a problem peculiar to the industry, there has been a recent drive to improve opportunities for women in the sector.
The Women in Aquaculture initiative was launched by the Fish Site at Aquaculture UK in Aviemore last year, and the Berlin forum, organised in conjunction with the EAS, provided a chance for women and men in the industry to continue the debate.
Co-chaired by the Fish Site’s Rob Fletcher and Nofima scientist Synnove Hellund, the meeting agreed that while there were plenty of women in aquaculture jobs 70 per cent of the global workforce, in fact they tended to be outnumbered by men in senior positions.
Fletcher said: It is not only an ethical imperative to ensure gender balance, but also an economic one. Research shows that having more women on the board is economically very wise. Companies with mixed gender boards out-perform all-male boards.’
Hellund said at her research institute there are 60 per cent females at all levels, and at universities, the majority of masters and PhD students are female, but they are under-represented at higher levels. And most companies are also dominated by men at top management and boardroom level.
Birgit Schmidt-Puckhaber of the German Agriculture Society pointed out that at an innovation forum during the EAS conference that afternoon, much of the start-up technology was presented by young women, but the judges were mostly older men.
In aquaculture, as the industry becomes less labour intensive and more knowledge based and technology driven, the younger generation will benefit, and already there are more young women entering the sector, said panellist Matthijs Metselaar of Benchmark Animal Health, who has seen a rise in the number of female vets.
But women still faced specific hurdles, many related to trying to work and raise a family at the same time.
Panellist Selina Stead, director of the Institute of Aquaculture at the University of Stirling, recounted an experience earlier in her career, when she lost out to a male colleague when it was her turn for a sabbatical. It was based on length of service and she had taken maternity leave and he had not.
2019 Fish Farmer/Wyvex Media Limited