Navigating the discourse: A bibliometric overview of research on fisherwomen in traditional marine fisheries

Abstract

Recent increases in the focus on the gender dimension of small-scale fisheries have challenged the conventional conceptualisation of what constitutes fishing. Growing acknowledgement of the women’s contribution to the sector and the disproportionate hardship women of fishing communities face can be seen in policy documents. In this context, this particular article does a bibliometric analysis to explore how far academic discourses on marine fisheries have explored the role gender plays in the sector. The study analysed scientific papers published in Web of Science (WoS) indexed journals published during the period from 2005 to 2024. The study used R Studio and VoS Viewer for bibliometric analysis. The paper highlights the nature of trends, evolution, and maturity of scientific publications in the field, as well as productivity analysis for the author publishing on MFW, distribution of scientific publications across the countries of the globe, and research journals. The study also did a keyword occurrence analysis and thematic analysis on what aspect of women's engagement in marine fishery researchers have cast light on. The result shows that academicians are increasingly attaining the gendered aspect of marine fisheries. However, developed countries disproportionately contribute to the authors and the number of research works. Concerning sources, we also found that only a few journals contributed to most of the publications. The insight gained from this paper would guide scholars interested in MFW in finding patterns and trends of research on the topic. The research paper reinforces the idea of rethinking the gender dimension and the need to further explore different aspects of gender in the marine fishing sector.