Sustainable Fisheries Partnership and SAGE partner to promote gender equality in seafood

Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) and Seafood and Gender Equality (SAGE) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote gender equality in the global seafood industry.

Announced at the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions annual conference, the partnership will empower key players in SFP’s Supply Chain Roundtables (SRs) with the tools to address gender inequalities within their sectors. By integrating SAGE’s Gender Equality Dialogues (GED) program, the collaboration aims to foster innovation and workforce development, helping major seafood buyers and importers create tangible solutions to advance gender equity.

“The SRs have a singular purpose – to drive significant and measurable change to fisheries sustainability,” said Julie Kuchepatov, founder of SAGE. “We are excited to work with SFP and the SRs to explore the incorporation of a gender component to this work, as it has been shown that, by empowering women and historically excluded groups, we can achieve our goals around environmental improvements faster and at scale.”

The seafood sector is grappling with numerous challenges, from rising concerns over human rights violations in production to navigating a volatile business climate, which Kuchepatov says has led to a deprioritization of efforts to improve the work experiences of underserved groups. To address this, the partnership will also pilot SAGE’s gender equity index tool to evaluate SFP’s internal operations, helping the organization reflect on its practices and advance equity within its workforce while driving broader industry change.

“Diverse workforces attract top talent and reduce employee turnover, and research shows that gender diversity in leadership is linked to higher profitability,” says Jim Cannon, chief executive officer of SFP. “I am keen to assess our own operations and apply what we learn from SAGE’s assessment because we owe it to our current and future workforce to periodically reflect on and adapt our policies to foster inclusivity and, thereby, innovation.”

SAGE is currently recruiting participant companies for the next GED cohort, scheduled to begin in early 2025. Read more here.

@GSA_Advocate