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. 2025 Aug 25;39(6):e70121. doi: 10.1111/cobi.70121

Insights on the roles of women in effective and procedurally just environmental governance from coastal fisheries management in Fiji

Caroline E Ferguson Irlanda 1,2,✉, Sangeeta Mangubhai 3, Elisabeta Waqa 4, Hugh Govan 5,6, Arundhati Jagadish 7, Sarah E Lester 8, Morena Mills 9, Margaret Tabunakawai‐Vakalalabure 10,11, Alifereti Tawake 5,10, Tanya O'Garra 9,12
PMCID: PMC12658921  PMID: 40855603

Abstract

Conservationists and fisheries managers have historically focused somewhat narrowly on achieving environmental goals at the expense of environmental justice. We examined the links between the two in the context of coastal fisheries management in Fiji, a nation highly dependent on marine resources and with significant external conservation investment. We focused on procedural justice, an underexamined dimension of environmental justice, which is concerned with how decisions are made and by whom. We took an intersectional approach in that we considered individuals’ multiple and interacting social identities with a focus on the roles of women. We examined the barriers to and benefits of women's and men's participation in fisheries management. We surveyed 655 key informants in 146 villages and conducted talanoa sessions (a Fijian research method) and 54 semistructured interviews in 4 of those villages. Women's participation was associated with numerous ecological and social benefits and an increase in support for fisheries management, yet their participation was very low. Women were more knowledgeable than men about the ocean, there was broad support for women's participation, and women's participation was critical for maintaining their access to fishing areas. However, restrictive gender norms and roles often limited women to token participation or no participation. This was especially true for young women and women who married into the village. Local women and men identified pathways to increasing women's participation, including the important role men can play in supporting women's voices. More generally, our results highlight the interconnection between achieving conservation and environmental goals and improving procedural environmental justice.

Keywords: environmental justice, Fiji, gender, participation, procedural justice, small‐scale fisheries, women, Fiyi, género, justicia ambiental, justicia procesal, mujeres, participación, pesquerías de escala pequeña

Women are widely viewed as the backbone of their villages, yet their participation in fisheries management is limited by restrictive gender roles. Men and women alike agree that women have valuable knowledge to contribute, and that men can serve as powerful allies.

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INTRODUCTION

In attempts to achieve environmental sustainability for critically important and overexploited fisheries, scientists and managers have historically focused somewhat narrowly on controlling overfishing and destructive practices, at the expense of justice (Estévez et al., 2021). But justice in environmental governance is instrumental to achieving social and ecological goals (Brooks et al., 2013; Persha et al., 2011; Ruano‐Chamorro et al., 2022) and is a moral imperative (UN General Assembly, 1992). In recent years, there has been increasing recognition of the importance of justice in fisheries management and marine conservation (Bennett, 2022; Bennett et al., 2023, 2021; Ertör, 2023; Estévez et al., 2021; Gustavsson et al., 2021; Lau et al., 2021; Österblom et al., 2020; Ruano‐Chamorro et al., 2022). Procedural justice, which concerns how decisions are made and by whom (Martin et al., 2015), remains an underexamined dimension of justice in environmental governance broadly and in fisheries management in particular (Barnett & Eakin, 2015; Bennett et al., 2023; Daigle et al., 1996; Estévez et al., 2021; Partelow et al., 2019; Pieraccini & Cardwell, 2016; Suiseeya, 2020).

When examining procedural justice in fisheries management, it is critical to consider that fishers are not a homogeneous group but differ according to their intersecting identities (Axelrod et al., 2022; Crenshaw, 1989; Ferguson, 2021). To date, the social categories that have received the greatest attention in the environmental justice literature have been race and income, whereas gender has remained a relatively marginal issue (Bell, 2016; Buckingham & Kulcur, 2009; Casey et al., 2023). Yet, gender is an important axis of environmental justice: women disproportionately bear environmental burdens and are less likely than men to have control over environmental decision‐making (Chambon et al., 2024; Macusi et al., 2022; Rocheleau, 1995b; Vunisea, 2016). Gender has received increasing attention in the fisheries management literature in recent years because scientists and managers recognize the important but often marginalized roles women play in the fisheries sector (e.g., Harper et al., 2013; Kitolelei & Kakuma, 2022; Kleiber et al., 2015; Macusi et al., 2022; Rohe et al., 2018; Thomas et al., 2021). Eighty percent of published studies on women's participation in small‐scale fisheries management reported that women had low or no participation, and that their exclusion resulted in negative outcomes (Chambon et al., 2024). Thus, women's participation must be considered in examinations of procedural justice in environmental governance, in relation to their intersecting identities.

The conservation and environmental governance literatures have long been concerned with participation—an important dimension of procedural justice, but the term is rarely clearly defined (Friedman et al., 2018). Yet, how participation is defined is deeply political, whether intended or not by the investigators, and does not always equate to meaningful engagement, having ideas valued, or the power to influence decision‐making. Some participatory processes, such as for marine spatial planning, “repackage power dynamics in the rhetoric of participation to legitimize the agendas of dominant actors” (Flannery et al., 2018). We investigated the distribution of participation in coastal fisheries management in villages. Our conception of participation is highly culturally contextualized. We used the iTaukei (Indigenous Fijian) word vakaitavi in our questioning about participation, which encompasses more than a person's mere presence in decision‐making bodies and suggests the ability of an individual or group to actually influence decision‐making. We asked multiple follow‐up questions with interviewees to delve into their own conceptions of participation, clarifying to what extent they felt comfortable speaking up in decision‐making spaces and whether they perceived that their views were meaningfully considered in final decisions about fisheries management.

We examined procedural justice in coastal fisheries management in Fiji through an intersectional lens. Fiji is an island nation highly dependent on marine resources for food security, cultural practices, and livelihoods (Charlton et al., 2016; Thomas et al., 2021), with significant involvement of outside actors in marine conservation through foreign aid and large international nonprofit organizations. We asked: What are the benefits of and barriers to women's and men's participation in coastal fisheries management and how do these vary according to their intersecting identities?

Coastal fisheries use and management in Fiji

We used gender to refer to sociocultural, political, and behavioral attributes associated with women and men—though there is significant variation and complexity beyond this binary—in contrast to sex, which refers to biological attributes, such as chromosomes and gamete size. Constructions of gender are neither uniform across societies nor historically static, and they interact with other identity markers, such as ethnicity, race, and age, to produce unique positions within social hierarchies (Crenshaw, 1989). The dominant binary construction of gender is itself culturally contextualized, and Fiji has historically recognized gender diversity (Presterudstuen, 2019).

Though fishing is often assumed to be the domain of men, women contribute significantly to small‐scale harvests and pre‐ and postharvest activities. Globally, an estimated 4 out of 10 people engaged in small‐scale fisheries are women (Franz et al., 2023). In Fiji, the fresh fish caught by women is the main source of protein for most of their households; their fishing and postharvest processing and marketing activities also contribute significantly to household income (Thomas et al., 2021). Women's roles in fisheries in Fiji differ according to their intersecting identities. For example, iTaukei women are predominantly involved in harvesting and marketing inshore species, such as mud crabs (Mangubhai et al., 2024), whereas Indo‐Fijian women are usually involved in buying the mud crabs and reselling them (Reddy, 2020). Yet, women's diverse roles are often undervalued, overlooked, and poorly understood (Thomas et al., 2021). Most fishing activities done by women are for subsistence and are not enumerated alongside the fishing activities done by men for commercial purposes (Vunisea, 2016). Yet, women spend more time than men on work overall, work fewer paid hours, and, in general, have less discretionary time than men (Narsey, 2007; Vunisea, 2016).

Women have varying ownership and user rights to fishing grounds, which are not consistent across Fiji (Vunisea, 2016). Those belonging or married into chiefly clans have more rights than those married into other clans, and those from the village usually have more privileges than those who married into a village (Vunisea, 2016). Despite their important roles alongside men in the fisheries sector, women's participation in management is guided and, in some cases, limited by societal expectations of women, for example, the expectation that women will take care of the home and children (Barclay et al., 2022). But excluding women from decision‐making excludes valuable ecological knowledge; because women participate in the sector differently than men, they have different and, in some cases, wider and deeper knowledge than men to contribute to effective fisheries management (Kitolelei & Kakuma, 2022; Thomas et al., 2021; Vunisea, 2016). The roles and responsibilities of women in Fiji are shifting (Thomas et al., 2021); still, restrictive gender norms hinder progress toward equality in fisheries management (Mangubhai & Lawless, 2021).

Customary fisheries management in Fiji is dynamic, complex, and varies by geography. Iqoliqoli (customary fishing areas) are owned by differentiated but interconnected social groups that regulate their use and enforce rules. Decisions around shared fishing grounds vary among provinces. For example, in some provinces, it is the paramount chief who makes or has a strong influence on decisions relating to resource use, whereas in others, it might be a single district chief that decides. In yet others, multiple village‐level chiefs make decisions together through their district chiefly meetings (bose vanua). Fishing ground owners may declare areas or species temporarily off limits—or tabu—to preserve resources for an intended purpose, such as a wedding, birth, or funeral ceremony (Ravuvu, 1983) as cited in Veitayaki (1998).

Fisheries management in Fiji today ultimately resides in its written laws, with Indigenous legal systems nested within the modern legal framework (Sloan & Chand, 2015). These written laws, many of which are inherited from the British colonial administration, confer a large degree of authority and responsibility to the central government and its administrative offices (Sloan & Chand, 2015). The constitution gives iTaukei communities some rights to manage, access, and utilize resources within iqoliqoli. The boundaries of iqoliqoli are legally demarcated by the iTaukei Land and Fisheries Commission. The practical reality is that iTaukei communities utilize their traditionally owned nearshore fishing areas, which are most often directly adjacent to the land that they legally own (Sloan & Chand, 2015). However, because the central government ultimately owns the iqoliqoli territory, its laws can supersede traditional governance (Sloan & Chand, 2015).

METHODS

Mixed methods approach

We used a combination of qualitative and quantitative data and talanoa (Nabobo‐Baba, U., 2006; Vaioleti, 2006), a method Indigenous to Fiji, to answer our research question. Dianne Rocheleau (1995a) discussed the merits of mixing methods from different epistemological traditions to address research questions, emphasizing the value of triangulation. Nightingale (2003) emphasized the power of mixed methods to highlight “silences and incompatibilities” as a form of triangulation, which recognizes that all knowledges are partial and situated (Haraway, 1991) and that different vantage points will produce different views of particular processes, including fisheries management.

The survey portion of this research was approved by the Middlesex University Ethical Review Board (application number 8030) on 17 July 2019. The interview and talanoa portion of this research was approved by the University of California, Santa Barbara IRB in April 2022. A research permit was granted by the Fiji Ministry of Education, Heritage & Arts on 14 June 2022 after obtaining approval from provincial government leaders and village chiefs.

Survey data collection and analyses

Survey data for this study were collected as part of an impact evaluation of the Fiji Locally Managed Marine Area network (FLMMA). Survey villages were selected using propensity score matching, a statistical method used to generate an as‐if random sample of FLMMA and non‐FLMMA villages (see O'Garra et al. [2023] for details). The survey focused on ecosystem functioning, livelihoods, subjective well‐being, fishing rules and regulations, and social capital, but for this study we only examined questions related to participation in fisheries management. The FLMMA is a learning network of communities and supporting partners (e.g., nongovernment organizations, academic institutions) that was founded in the early 1990s to facilitate the revival of traditional resource‐use practices in Fiji to maximize community benefits while ensuring sustainability (Veitayaki et al., 2004). Today, FLMMA spans an estimated 350 communities across 12 provinces (O'Garra et al., 2023).

The survey was conducted from October 2019 to March 2020 with groups of key informants from 5 social groups (leaders, women, fishers, Yaubula [environment committee], and youth) in 146 villages. Participants were selected through consultation with the village chief and other senior leaders in the community, with input from other community representatives. The surveys took place after conducting the traditional sevusevu ceremony (in which visitors ask permission and are welcomed) and obtaining consent from the village chief, followed by individual consent from key informants. All of the respondent groups had 3 participants at most present. The women's groups usually consisted of the leader of the group along with 2 committee members. The final sample included 146 leaders, 146 women, 143 fishers, 83 Yaubula, and 136 youth group members. More details about sampling and data collection are in Appendix S1.

Interview data collection and analyses

From the surveyed villages, we selected 4 in which to conduct in‐depth interviews with women and men from June to August 2022 (Figure 1), 2 each in Ra and Rewa provinces. Villages were selected such that one of the villages in each province had reported high levels of women's participation and one had reported no participation by women in the survey. We kept village and participant names anonymous to protect confidentiality. Interview questions are in Appendix S2.

FIGURE 1.

FIGURE 1

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Study sites (Villages 1 and 2 in Nakorotubu District in Ra Province and Villages 3 and 4 on Beqa Island in Rewa Province) in an examination of women's roles in fisheries management in Fiji.

We used purposeful and snowball sampling to select respondents for the in‐depth structured interviews. We conducted 54 interviews (28 iTaukei women and 26 iTaukei men) and aimed for diversity with respect to marital status, migrant status, age, clan, and education to assess differences among women and among men based on their intersecting identities. Interviews were conducted in the iTaukei language by E.W., an iTaukei woman from the Lau province with traditional relations to the 4 villages, which enabled candid conversations with respondents. Interviews took approximately 40 min and with permission were audio recorded. We asked questions about how and why women and men participate in fisheries management in the village, what barriers they face to participation, how these barriers can be overcome, and their knowledge of and support for fisheries management efforts in their village. Interviews were analyzed inductively and iteratively in Dovetail (www.Dovetail.com) after transcribing and translating interviews into English. More details about data collection and analyses are in Appendix S1.

Talanoa sessions

In addition to semistructured interviews, E.W. held talanoa sessions in the 4 villages. Talanoa is “a personal encounter where people story their issues, their realities, and aspirations” (Vaioleti, 2006). Talanoa is a uniquely Pacific research method rooted in local ways of sharing knowledge that “holistically intermingles researchers’ and participants’ emotions, knowing, and experiences” (Manu'atu, 2000) as cited in Vaioleti (2006), with particular embodiments in Fiji (Nabobo‐Baba, 2006). In this way, talanoa as a research method reflects the value of reciprocity, rebalancing power and reducing distance between researcher and participant (Vaioleti, 2006). Although talanoa is unique to Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga, other Pacific approaches, such as hui (Aotearoa/New Zealand), share an emphasis on process rather than outcome, binding a community together even when there is considerable disagreement about an issue (Robinson & Robinson, 2005). Talanoa was adopted by the United Nations for climate negotiations at COP23 in 2017 under the climate conference presidency of Fiji (Holthaus, 2018).

RESULTS

Survey results

Women's participation in coastal fisheries management was low. Of the 5 groups surveyed, key informants representing women (n = 145) were the most likely (70%) to report no meetings or no participation (χ 2 test of independence = 111.582, df = 4, p < 0.001) and the least likely (3%) to report full participation in fisheries management in their village (Fisher's exact test p < 0.001) compared to all other social groups (Figure 2).

FIGURE 2.

FIGURE 2

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Level of participation in fisheries management by group according to key informants (numbers in bars, number of people). One women's group did not answer this question (sample size 145); all other groups provided responses.

Although more participation by women appeared to be associated with marginally greater perceptions of the benefits of fisheries management (Figure 3a), this relationship was not statistically significant (Fisher's exact test p = 0.654). Indeed, most women (80%) reported perceived benefits of participation in fisheries management, regardless of their own participation levels.

FIGURE 3.

FIGURE 3

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Women's perception of benefits by (a) level of participation according to key informants (n = 140) and (b) perception of fairness according to key informants (n = 138) (numbers in bars, number of respondents). Missing values are due to nonresponse or don't know responses.

When asked about fairness of decision‐making, with 5 response options ranging from very fair to very unfair, just 12% (n = 17) of women perceived decision‐making to be very fair. Out of this subsample, 14 women (88%) also indicated that they perceive benefits from fisheries management (Figure 3b). As perception of fairness decreased, so did perception of benefits (Fisher's exact test p = 0.017); only 3 of the 6 respondents (50%) who perceived decision‐making to be very unfair reported that they perceive benefits from fisheries management.

More participation by women was weakly associated with more support for fisheries management (Fisher's exact test p = 0.067). All of the women (n = 4) who reported full participation were completely supportive of fisheries management, whereas only 34 out of the 89 women (38%) who reported no participation were completely supportive. The difference in proportions was statistically significant (Fisher's exact test p = 0.038) (Figure 4a). Only women who reported no participation or little participation in fisheries management were not supportive of it. Greater perception of benefits is also associated with greater support (Fisher's exact test p = 0.001). A total of 93% of women who perceived benefits from fisheries management (n = 109) were completely supportive, whereas only 7% of those who did not perceive benefits (n = 24) were completely supportive (Fisher's exact test p < 0.001) (Figure 4b).

FIGURE 4.

FIGURE 4

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Women's support for fisheries management by (a) level of participation according to key informants (n = 134) and (b) perception of benefits according to key informants (n = 133) (numbers in bars, number of respondents) Missing values are due to nonresponse or don't know responses.

Perceived benefits of participating in fisheries management

Twenty‐two out of 26 men (85%) and 9 of out 28 women (32%) reported that they had participated in fisheries management at some point in their life. When asked about the benefits of participation, 2 respondents (both women) explicitly stated they had not perceived any benefits from participating in fisheries management. However, the majority of respondents who had participated in management (n = 31 [22 men, 9 women]) perceived multiple ecological and social benefits.

Thirteen respondents noted increased abundance of fish and other marine life as a result of their participation in fisheries management. For example, an elder man from Village 3 noted, “The benefits [of participating] are the outcomes, one of which is the tabu that we are now enjoying the benefits from, indicated by the fishes that we now see right here at the village seawall, which never used to happen before.” Other ecological benefits mentioned by respondents included improved coral reef habitat, reappearance of rare species, increased size of target species, and indirect benefit of improved freshwater management in the village.

The most commonly perceived social benefit, mentioned by 9 men and 5 women, was enhanced awareness and knowledge of fisheries management in the village. A young man from Village 3 echoed many respondents when he said, “I get to know about what's going on in the community, what is tabu and what is not.” An older man in Village 4 noted, “I get to know some Western ideas that blend well with what we believe as traditional fishers,” referring to LMMA interventions.

Respondents also noted personal development benefits to participating in fisheries management—for example, a middle‐aged woman from Village 1 holding a leadership position among women said, “When I was appointed to take up this role, I was a shy and voiceless woman. I prayed that God grant me the confidence to be able to carry out my duty well. I feel that I have grown in that area very much.” Others mentioned feeling a sense of pride, growth, and spiritual development, with one middle‐aged woman who married into Village 1 noting, “By taking up roles and responsibilities in the village and the community, we get empowered to speak on subjects that we have become more aware of through the roles we've taken up.”

Relational benefits were also noted by respondents. For example, an older woman living in Village 2 commented, “I love to go to be part of the discussions with the other women. We talk about so many other things that are helpful… It has brought the women together closer.” A middle‐aged man from Village 3 noted, “the positive change in attitude for our young ones who have learnt to abide by the rules of the tabu.”

Importance of women's participation

When asked about the importance of village women participating in fisheries decision‐making, all but one respondent (a middle‐aged man from Village 4) agreed that women's participation is important. Both women and men expressed that women, as a group, are more knowledgeable than men about the ocean because they are the ones doing the majority of the harvesting in the village to feed their families. A young woman in Village 2 argued, “It is the women that do everything in the households, from gathering firewood to fishing for food. So, the women know so much more about our seas and land than the men.” A young woman from Village 2 suggested that women's participation improves fisheries management, “Women often have deep reflections and thoughts that they share about fisheries management because they are the ones fishing and gleaning and know the conditions of our reefs and ocean better.”

Both women and men referenced fairness. For example, a young woman from Village 4 said, “The women are the ones doing everything for and in the village. Women run the village basically. So, it's only fair that their voices be heard in decisions as such.” A middle‐aged man from Village 3 connected fairness with women's knowledge of fisheries, “Everything that happens is because women make it happen. So, it is only right that women also be part of the decision‐making as they are the ones that know our fisheries better than men.” A middle‐aged woman from Village 1 said plainly, “Since we are also humans, I ask that we be included in fisheries decision making.”

The loss of women's access to fishing areas was frequently mentioned as a cost of failing to include women in decision‐making. In 3 of the 4 villages, tabu areas had been established directly in front of the village, where women fish. As a result, women had to travel much further to fish, adding to their time burdens and demanding more physically from them. A middle‐aged woman in Village 3 explained, “If women were included in the discussion, we would have raised our objections to the places they have placed the tabu as it has made it harder for us to go fishing as it means a long walk for us to where we are allowed to fish. Because we are the ones that go fishing for household consumption more, we know better as to which places should be tabu and which ones should be open for fishing.”

The chairman of the village committee in Village 1 explained that women had been included after the fact to correct the problem by removing the tabu, “We had a meeting some months ago where the women asked about the tabu areas again. I opened up the discussions to have the women speak. Most women asked that the tabu be lifted. The outcome of the meeting was that the tabu was lifted and the women were allowed to fish from these areas where they couldn't before. It has made their life easier.” A young man from Village 2 explained that opening the areas to fishing was a direct result of women's participation in fisheries management, “The area closer to the village is not tabu. This to make it easier for women to just go fish, come back, fish, come back. Because it is closer to home. A few reefs in front of the village are open to allow for this, and this was because women asked at the meeting.”

Gender roles as a limit to women's participation

In‐depth interviews revealed that women's participation in fisheries management was low in all 4 villages, despite reported high levels of women's participation by key informants in the survey in 2 of the villages. Women and men referenced restrictive gender roles to explain why women's participation is low. A young woman from Village 4 explained, “If a woman speaks up [at the village meeting], she will be snubbed, as it is still not accepted for women to be part of the decision‐making.”

However, many women expressed frustration at these restrictive roles. A middle‐aged woman from Village 4 said, “The biggest challenge we face as women is the opposition from our men. Most of the men in this village still believe women are not to speak at meetings about matters like this. When we want to speak, they make a fool of us and tell us to stick to the kitchen.” Another middle‐aged woman from the same village shared, “Here, women are not counted as important. At least not important enough to have a say in decision‐making. Only the men decide things.”

Yet, gender roles are shifting, opening a door for women's participation to shift, too. A middle‐aged man in Village 1 said, “The women are always neglected in our tradition. They are always left out of decision‐making. We need that to change because their roles in the traditional definition have changed as well. They have become more the provider than most men.”

iTaukei women are not homogeneous, and interview responses suggested that their interactions with fisheries management differed according to their intersecting age, marital status, and migrant status. For example, a young woman who married into Village 4 said, “The women and young ones like me who marry into the village, we just attend the meetings to listen. I don't usually feel comfortable voicing my thoughts on issues discussed. For us, I feel we are too young, and also women are at these meetings to listen, not to decide.” A middle‐aged woman who married into Village 2 connected her challenges with fisheries management to the centralized system. She said, “Anything about fisheries in this village, I have no right to speak on. An example is the licenses they are issuing for the harvest of sea cucumbers in the months of July and August. The licenses can only be given to people from here who are registered in the Vola ni Kawabula [the official register of Fijian landowners]. That approach discriminates against women who marry into the village, even though they have been performing their roles in the village in terms of village obligations.”

Women and men had very different perceptions of how much women are participating in fisheries management in their village. Twenty out of 24 men (83%) answered that women are participating in fisheries management in their village; meanwhile, only 11 out of 31 women (35%) agreed. Although women have a representative at village fisheries management meetings, this representative does not hold decision‐making authority. For example, a young man from Village 2 explained, “Women are often asked what their thoughts are, especially when they collect food for their families.” But a middle‐aged woman living in the same village described the last meeting she attended, saying, “The men led the meeting from beginning to end. The women, we are present but only as listeners… The women's representative, even if she is present at the bose vanua [meeting of the district's chiefs], she does not speak. She has a seat at the meeting, but as a listener participant.” A young man from Village 1 reflected, “They speak up, but it appears the decision has already been made.”

Locally led pathways to increasing women's participation

Women universally expressed a desire to participate more. Women and men both highlighted the role that men can play as allies supporting women's participation. “We start from our homes if we want change in the community” (young woman from Village 1) was a sentiment echoed by many. A young man from Village 4 said, “The men should make way for the women to be included and be part of the decision‐making processes, and women should be encouraged to come to meetings and make their voices heard.”

Already, women find ways to shape decision‐making. A middle‐aged woman in Village 1 said, “Us women, we are liga kaukauwa [a Fijian idiom, ‘make things happen out of nothing’]. When we want something, we will make sure we get it, regardless of the obstacles.”

Some external entities have attempted to address gender equity but have fallen short. For example, a middle‐aged woman in Village 4 reflected on the inadequacy of mandated quotas, “Only now, because it's become a requirement by the government for most things, nearly all committees in the village have women on them. But otherwise, in our community, men make the decisions and we women just follow.” A young woman in Village 1 suggested, “Most times when workshops like these [about fisheries management] are brought to the villages, the women are more concerned about the food to feed the participants and end up in the kitchen rather than being present.” Some external interventions were almost humorously ineffective, such as an example provided by a middle‐aged woman in Village 1, “We had two sewing machines donated to us from India. But they are useless as no one can assemble the parts. Just a request from us–if women of this village are to be empowered, we just want sewing machines that can work.” A middle‐aged man from the same village diagnosed the problem thusly, “People try to please the NGOs and government officials that come to us and easily accept what's being presented to us, sacrificing their own opinions and beliefs.”

DISCUSSION

There has been increasing emphasis on the moral imperative of justice in conservation and natural resource management (Bennett, 2022). Our study highlighted that just processes are also instrumental to achieving environmental and social outcomes. We found that procedural justice was linked to numerous perceived ecological and social benefits and increased levels of support for fisheries management among women. This aligns with the large body of literature linking participation and legitimacy (Estévez et al., 2021; Kuperan & Sutinen, 1998; Levi et al., 2009; Raakjær Nielsen, 2003; Suiseeya, 2020). Procedural justice is key to legitimacy, which is instrumental to compliance with fisheries management (Hatcher et al., 2000; Kuperan & Sutinen, 1998). People follow laws chiefly because they believe them to be legitimate, and procedural justice has been identified as the most important factor influencing perceptions of legitimacy (Raakjær Nielsen, 2003; Tyler, 2006). The relationship between people's assessment of procedural justice and their perceptions of legitimacy are widespread and robust across legal and political contexts (Levi et al., 2009; Tyler, 2006). Although we did not examine compliance directly, the literature suggests that greater support for regulations would yield higher compliance (Jentoft et al., 2013), resulting in the expected ecological benefits of conservation and natural resource management. In this way, procedural justice should yield better ecological outcomes. However, compliance is context dependent (Arias, 2015; Arias et al., 2015), and future research should examine motivations for compliance with fisheries rules in Fiji.

We found that women were widely viewed as the backbone of villages, doing most of the fishing and gleaning. As others have identified, women thus also have unique and valuable ecological knowledge to contribute to fisheries management (Kitolelei & Kakuma, 2022; Thomas et al., 2021). Women may be engaging in fisheries practices that contribute to fisheries declines (Thomas et al., 2021), meaning their knowledge of, support for, and compliance with fisheries rules have direct implications for ecological health. Where women were excluded from decision‐making, they lost access to their fishing grounds. Tabu created without women's input were in at least 2 cases later removed to restore access, putting social and environmental goals directly into conflict. This is consistent with findings in the Solomon Islands, where some women were inclined toward breaking local marine management rules because they had been little involved in the decision‐making, had lost some trust in the local male leadership, and were more constrained in their fishing activities because a marine closure was located where mainly women used to fish (Rohe et al., 2018). This suggests that including women in fisheries management decision‐making at the village level would likely yield social and ecological benefits, maintaining women's access to fisheries while designating appropriate areas for conservation and increasing compliance among this important segment of the fishing population. Beyond fisheries, beyond Fiji, and beyond gender, our findings indicated that including resource users who have historically been marginalized from management in decision‐making could yield not only more ethical governance but also ecological benefits.

Women's participation in village fisheries management was severely limited by restrictive gender roles. Many of the women in our study, across age groups, expressed that they desired more decision‐making power. Several referenced their primary role in using marine resources and caretaking for the household and village, which gave them greater insights than men into how resources should be managed. Others explicitly named gender equality as their motivation. Taking an intersectional approach, we found that young women and women who married into the village were especially limited from participating. The centralization of fisheries management may exacerbate these inequities, for example, by restricting the harvest of highly lucrative sea cucumbers (multiple species) to individuals who are registered in the Vola ni Kawabula, which would not include women who married into the village. Centralization of resource management is a common product of colonialism throughout the Pacific and indeed the globe, and its implications for equitable resource use and effective management warrant further investigation.

Women also highlighted that existing opportunities for participation did not equate to decision‐making power. Though each of the 4 villages in our study had a women's representative on the fishing council, having this representative present at meetings did not allow women to influence decision‐making. Furthermore, this individual did not necessarily represent the younger and migrant women. This finding speaks to the important distinctions between power, representation, and authority that are critical to procedural justice (Suiseeya, 2020). According to Arnstein's “ladder of public participation,” which provides a foundation for many of the central concepts that shape public engagement research and practice today, women's participation equates to, at most, tokenism—and in some cases, outright nonparticipation (Arnstein, 1969). Our findings also highlighted that external interventions designed to increase the representation of women in decision‐making spaces do not guarantee their power or authority in decision‐making. Furthermore, they may create more work for them, for example, by creating expectations that they prepare meals for workshops without being able to participate meaningfully in the workshops.

Our findings align with a growing body of literature on women's limited participation in fisheries management. A recent review by Chambon et al. (2024) showed that 80% of published studies globally on the topic found that women have low or no participation. Furthermore, in most cases, women attended management meetings but did not have full opportunities to speak up and influence decision‐making. The same review showed that women's lack of participation was commonly associated with negative outcomes, though few studies had examined environmental outcomes. Similar to our findings in Fiji, many cases highlighted the untapped potential of women's ecological knowledge to enhance fisheries management. Furthermore, our findings suggested that greater participation in fisheries management may open doors to greater empowerment in society writ large, for example, through increased confidence, pride, knowledge of village affairs, and recognition as leaders.

Outside actors should not further colonial harms by intervening into customary systems to empower women. Indeed, perceptions of fairness in Fiji are “plural and situated” (Gurney et al., 2021). Rather, local women and their allies must be at the helm of the Fijian movement to achieve greater gender equality. The most common locally identified pathway to increasing women's participation was the recruitment of vocal allyship by male relatives. Masculinity—like femininity—is dynamic, socially constructed, and culturally and temporally contextualized (Hopkins & Gorman‐Murray, 2019). Women in our study also noted that they are already demanding and seizing greater power, even when it creates controversy. Additional research is needed on appropriate and effective locally driven solutions to address the barriers women face to participating in fisheries management identified in this study, and in environmental governance more generally. Recent work to elucidate the multiple domains of procedural justice and how they can be promoted in conservation decision‐making processes offers one set of tools (Ruano‐Chamorro et al., 2022).

Our results should be interpreted in historical context. Customary law was historically dynamic and diverse across Fiji. However, translating and adapting iTaukei laws to fit a rigid colonial framework transformed diverse power imbalances, societal inequalities, and ideological assumptions into homogeneous, fixed legal realities (Wilson, 2021). This not only froze customary law based on ahistorical assumptions of customs but also froze these laws as they were translated and sometimes misrepresented under colonial rule at times of intense societal upheaval (Wilson, 2021). Our findings suggest that iTaukei women desire more power to shape decision‐making in fisheries management.

Finally, our results yielded important methodological insights. We initially designed this study as a comparative case study; using the key informant survey responses, we selected 2 villages with reported high levels of women's participation and 2 villages with reported low levels of women's participation, one each from Ra and Rewa Provinces. We had intended to examine why some villages were more procedurally just than others. However, our interviews revealed that participation levels among women in these villages were in fact lower than reported by the key informants. This misalignment points to a methodological challenge in research on equity: key informants, who are typically selected for their status (e.g., leadership of women's groups, relationship with NGO), are more likely to have more power than other members of the wider group. In this case, the women key informants were more likely to be engaged in fisheries management through the FLMMA and thus may not have been representative. Our interviews with a greater number and diversity of women in these villages revealed that, in at least 2 cases, the key informants’ perceptions of women's participation were not reflective of most women's experiences. When key informant surveys are used, researchers should intentionally seek a diversity of perspectives and attempt to eliminate participant selection biases. Indeed, this challenge echoes the need for greater and more diverse representation of women on fisheries management councils in general. Regardless of method, all affected parties should be meaningfully and fairly engaged in problem and solution framing. This is not only a moral imperative but also brings legitimacy and durability to the management system.

We found that procedural justice in environmental decision‐making was directly tied to environmental goals. Women were more likely to perceive benefits from fisheries management and to support management when they participated in it and when they perceived decision‐making to be fair. Furthermore, women's participation was critical to maintaining access to their fishing areas, to leveraging women's knowledge for more informed management, and was likely to increase their compliance with regulations. Women and men agreed that women's participation in fisheries management is important. However, women's participation was strongly limited by restrictive gender roles. This was especially true for young women and women who married into a village. Our results are consistent with prior research demonstrating that token participation is not adequate. Although each of the 4 villages had a women's representative on the fishing council, having this representative present at meetings did not lead to true decision‐making authority. Advances toward greater gender equality in village‐level fisheries management must be locally driven, with respect for iTaukei customs and support for community‐level champions, and should account for intersectionality. Our results suggest that meaningfully including a greater diversity of perspectives in environmental governance would yield significant social and ecological benefits and mitigate the harms of conservation, in addition to addressing global justice concerns.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The survey portion of this project was funded by the British Academy's Knowledge Frontiers: International Interdisciplinary Research Projects Programme (award KF2∖100033) (T.O., S.M., H.G., A.T., M.T.V., M.M.). Additional funding was provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (grant 16‐1608‐151132‐CSD) (S.M.) and the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation (grant JW55 for the Alliance for Conservation Evidence and Sustainability) (A.J., M.M.). The interview portion of this research was funded by the Waitt Foundation through the Environmental Markets Lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara (C.E.F.I., S.E.L.). This is Contribution 11 to the Insights for Catalyzing Conservation at Scale initiative. We thank the staff from the provincial offices of Ba, Bua, Cakaudrove, Kadavu, Lomaiviti, Macuata, Nadroga/Navosa, Ra, Rewa, Serua, and Tailevu for supporting this research. We are grateful to the team leaders (E. Waqa, M. Lalawa, V. Tikoenavuli) and data collectors (N. Drose, A. N. Ratu, J. Ratuva, U. Navuni, U. Vuli, M. Radinimatai, L. Uluiburotu, T. Dradra, R. T. Rokoratu, O. Vosailagi) who administered the surveys. We acknowledge I. Qauqau (WCS) for assisting with organization of baseline data and A. Bueno (Middlesex University) for programming the data entry platform. We acknowledge Y. Nand (WCS) for overseeing the management of data entry and volunteers R. Audh, N. Bhan, N. N. Prasad, and V. Duavakacagi who assisted with data entry. We acknowledge the valuable inputs of FLMMA representatives, A. Qorovarua, T. Seru, K. Ravonoloa, R. I. Baleirotuma, and T. Veibi, together with our partner organizations working on sites, WCS, World Wide Fund for Nature, Pacific Blue Foundation, and Global Vision Initiative, in the selection of sites. The FLMMA Secretariat coordinated all logistics for the surveys. Finally, we acknowledge the 146 Fijian communities, including the chiefs, Yaubula, and women groups, fishers, and youth groups whose goodwill, wisdom, and shared experience on decades of LMMA implementation efforts become the basis of these analyses. We also thank E. Burns and S. Advani for creating our figures.

Ferguson Irlanda, C. E. , Mangubhai, S. , Waqa, E. , Govan, H. , Jagadish, A. , Lester, S. E. , Mills, M. , Tabunakawai‐Vakalalabure, M. , Tawake, A. , & O'Garra, T. (2025). Insights on the roles of women in effective and procedurally just environmental governance from coastal fisheries management in Fiji. Conservation Biology, 39, e70121. 10.1111/cobi.70121

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