A global team of researchers has developed a comprehensive framework to close gender data gaps in small-scale fisheries, addressing the persistent undercounting of women’s contributions to the sector.

The perspective paper, published in September 2025 in the journal Ambio, brings together insights from 36 contributors across six continents — including Michigan State University Profs. Mar Mancha-Cisneros and Mark Axelrod — to propose concrete solutions that address these gaps.

This short descriptive report comes from work during 2025 with the Patron of the seas project run by Liz Drury O’Neill from the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Professor Alicer Ferrer from the University of the Philippines Visayas with collaborators Therese Lindahl, Simon West, Jinky Hopanda, Julie Ann Claire Nique and Robert Pomeroy. Here we present data collected from 144 women (107 men) across 7 Sitios (akin to villages) in one island Barangay (the smallest political unit in the Phillipines) in Concepcion, Iloilo as part of an experimental campaign in 2025 (to read more about the economic experiments see here).