Introduction

Fishing management regimes involve a set of rules through which the rights, duties, incentives, expectations and conducts of those who are devoted to this activity are shaped and alternated. Rights are an important aspect of the institutions in which the fisheries operate ^{(Huppert, 2005)}. The fishing permits establish rights of access and allow managing fisheries, defining who can fish and who cannot ^{(Charles, 2005)}.

Access can be promoted through the legal path –de jure– or through local norms and customs –de facto– ^{(Rocheleau et al., 2004)}. In a broader sense, the following rights are part of property rights: access (entering a fishery or fishing area), capture and exploitation (right to a specific amount of effort), management (right to regulate the users’ patterns of use), exclusion (who has the right of access), and alignment (allows the transfer or sale of the right). These are accumulative and allow observing social patterns of economic organization ^{(Charles, 2005}; ^{Poteete et al., 2012)}.

In official discourses, the rights of use are promoted as a path to contribute to planning and to making fishing conservation more effective ^{(FAO 2012}; ^{Charles 2005)}; however, these measures privatize the access to fishing resources ^{(Acheson, 2000)} because they limit the number of people who can gain access to them ^{(Jentoft, 2004}; ^{Huppert, 2005)}. The State establishes a series of requirements to grant fishing permits; for example, to own the means of production, process that excludes most fishermen and women because those who fulfill the requirements tend to be merchants with higher economic power, as happened in Bahía de Kino, Sonora ^{(Cinti et al., 2010)}.

The privatization of fishing resources through granting permits tends to benefit men, since women are not considered active users of natural resources and their access to them is restricted ^{(Fraga, 1999)}. This situation promotes the absence of women in decision making related to the management of fishing resources ^{(Kleiber 2014)}. ^{Ngwenya et al. (2012)} document that in Botswana the fishing policy and intervention programs have led to increasing the inequalities between women and men in the control and access to fishing resources. This happened because the government fostered the creation of fishing unions to provide them with jobs, and the incorporation of women who traded and processed fish was excluded from such organizations.

In Iceland, ^{Skaptadóttir and Proppé (2005)} found that in the implementation of the system of transferable quotas the government considered exclusively men. Although not all of them have quotas, in the domestic units where they do have them, the husbands are the ones who decide on the rent or sale of the quotas, marginalizing women and diminishing their power of decision.

In México, CONAPESCA, which depends on the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock Production, Rural Development, Fishing and Food (Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación, SAGARPA), is the institution in charge of regulating the fishing activity and managing the permits³. Jointly with the fishing planning programs and the management plans, permits are part of the fishing policy legal instruments⁴. The commercial fishing permits can be granted to natural or legal persons of Mexican nationality, of legal age. The number of permits is related to the number of individuals, boats or fishing techniques that are applied to the capture or extraction of one or several species in a specific zone or period, and is established from indicators or availability and conservation of fishing resources contained in the National Fishing Charter ^{(DOF, 2012)}.

Since 1930, with the government interest to promote the participation of cooperatives in industrialization, permits were given in a privileged manner to fishermen organized in cooperatives to capture reserved species such as shrimp, abalone, lobster, sea bass, Pismo clam, and totoaba. With the 1992 Fishing Law, framed in a neoliberal approach, in discourse privileges a rational management of fishing resources, and the regime of reserved species for cooperatives disappears ^{(Soberanes-Fernández, 1994)}. This made it possible to transfer the fishing permits to private individuals. These rules are reflected in daily life; particularly, in the decisions that men and women make regarding natural resources, since the domestic units are articulated within a context of global economic policy ^{(Leach et al., 2004)}; in this case, the neoliberalization of natural resources ^{(Doyon and Sabinot, 2015)}.

The objective of this article is to document the transfer of fishing permits from men to women in Isla Arena, and to discuss whether this transfer generates modifications in the access and control of women to fishing resources. Although it has been documented that gender differences in property relationships are important for the management of resources ^{(Rocheleau et al., 2004}; ^{Leach et al., 2004)}, and that owning property can lead to feminine empowerment ^{(Agarwal, 1999}; ^{León, 2008)}, it should be highlighted that this is not automatic. There are other factors that intervene in this process, such as the purpose of fishing (commercial or subsistence), the family composition, and the type of participation of women in fishing activities. This study highlights the importance of taking into account these factors to move towards a sustainable fishing policy with gender equity.

Methodology

The field work comprised three periods. During the first phase, which took place in May 2014, open interviews and participant observation were performed, which allowed identifying the local organization related to fishing, who they are and how they participate in it, as well as aspects to consider for the elaboration of a survey applied between June and September 2014. This survey, titled “Fishing Survey of Ecosur-Isla Arena”, allowed understanding aspects related to the type of permits and the subsidies that the permit holders have received. The sample was made up of 62 domestic units, in which men and women who work in some of the phases of the fishing productive system were surveyed: capture, disembarkation and/or processing. As a result, there were a total of 112 informants over 18 years of age, 79 men and 33 women. The questionnaires were applied separately to men and women to avoid interference in their responses.

The third period of information gathering took place in October 2014. At that time, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 16 women and 11 men, to delve into aspects related to the forms of use of the fishing permits and the organization of the domestic unit. Domestic units of permit holders were identified through the technique of “snowball” ^{(LeCompte and Schensul, 2013)}; for this purpose, the process started with women permit holders identified during the survey, who referred other women permit holders. In total, 14 women permit holders were identified and it was possible to interview 12 of them. The men interviewed were fishermen with and without permit who were identified through the same technique.

The survey was captured directly in tablets, with the support of capturing masks elaborated with Access, according to the methodology suggested by ^{Gurri et al. (2015)}. The systematization and analysis of the survey was done with the SPSS hardware. Registering the open and semi-structured interviews carried out during the first and third phase of the field work was done with a digital recorder. Each interview was transcribed and later codified in NVivo10.

Isla Arena, study zone

Isla Arena is located in the northern extreme of the state of Campeche, in the municipality of Calkiní. Geographically it is a peninsula, 2 km long and 150 wide ^{(Gómez, 2005)}. The first human settlements in the island date from 1861, with Maya people from Yucatán and Campeche as the first indigenous inhabitants, descendants of Yaqui and Beliceño indigenous people ^{(Castillo, 2013)}. Currently there is a population of 754 people, located in 203 inhabited households ^{(INEGI, 2010)}.

Isla Arena is part of the Ría Celestún Biosphere Reserve, which presents a diversity of environments in a relatively reduced space and whose plant composition is considered to have an excellent degree of conservation ^{(SEMARNAT, 2002)}. This zone is ecologically relevant because it is located in the most important estuary of the northwestern basin of underground water in the Yucatan Peninsula, coinciding with the ring of cenotes. It is part of the coastal corridor of the best conserved wetlands in the western part of the Yucatan Peninsula, together with the “El Palmar” State Reserve in Yucatán and the Los Petenes Biosphere Reserve in Campeche, and the Ría Celestún Biosphere Reserve in Yucatán ^{(SEMARNAT, 2002)}.

Up until 1999, when the highway was built, the population remained in relative isolation and the commercial exchanges with the neighboring community of Celestún were carried out by sea. The highway allowed the implementation of electric energy, drinking water and sinkholes, which represented an important change in the quality of life of the population ^{(Gómez, 2005)}. The high concentrations of salts dissolved in the soils make impossible establishing grazing areas ^{(SEMARNAT, 2002)}, as well as agricultural farms, situation that restricts the inhabitants of the island in having crops and backyard animals for self-supply ^{(Méndez, 2005)}. This fact is important to understand the role of riverside fishing as socioeconomic axis and its link with the requirement of the fishing permit to carry out the activity.

Artisanal fishing is practiced in this island. The main species captured are octopus (Octopus maya), crab (Menippe mercenaria), bonnethead (Sphyrna tiburo), sharpnose shark (Rhizoprionodon terraenovae), ray (Aetobatus narinari); various sea snails: true tulip (Fascilaria tulipa), Florida crown conch (Melogena corona), milk conch (Strombus costatus), Caribbean crown conch (Melongena melongena), Florida horse conch (Pleuroploca gigantea) and West Indian chank shell (Turbinella angulata). Scale fish are characterized by being multispecific, that is, the capture includes several species, and among them the following stand out: seatrout (Cynoscion sp.), king mackerel (Scomberomorus cavalla), common grunt (Haemulon plumieri), common snook (Centropomus undecimalis) and flathead red mullet (Mugil cephalus) ^{(SEMARNAT, 2002}; ^{Castillo, 2013)}.

Island women permit holders

Of the 12 women permit holders identified, nine are from Isla Arena and three are from the state of Yucatán. Regarding their marital status, nine are married, two single and one widow. Nine of the families of the women interviewed are nuclear and three are extended. Nine have permits for scale fish and octopus, two for octopus and one for snail. Although this initiative was promoted by the men, the women agreed for the fishing permits to have their name. Obtaining the fishing permits by these women was through two paths. The first is related to the dissolution of cooperatives, moment when the partners, at the time of withdrawing from them, distributed the permits and some of them transferred them to family members, in certain cases to women. This began to happen since 2005. Seven women permit holders described having received the permit under these circumstances. It was not identified that women received the permit any other way (Table 2).

Five women obtained the right to fish through the second mechanism identified, which was purchasing it. The purchase was made in credit and they paid between 30 000 and 70 000 pesos. The average time it took to pay the debt was two years, as a woman permit holder describes, who bought the permit together with her husband:

We bought it from a man in Campeche, and it was difficult, it took about two years; it belonged to a friend and we paid it in installments, until 30 000 pesos were paid (Woman permit holder, 46 years of age, 1 year with the permit).

In order to purchase the permit, families organized themselves around the fishing work (Table 3). In a domestic unit that corresponds to an extended family work was carried out jointly: the father and eldest son (married and a father himself) fished and the wife would fillet the fish. The money earned from fillets served to pay the fishing permit.

In another case, of a nuclear family, the money to pay the permit was raised through fishing and the sale of fish by the wife. Only one case was reported where the woman permit holder purchased the permit herself. It is a single woman, 29 years old, from an extended family. She is a fisherwoman and has a permit for octopus; in her domestic unit there is another fishing permit, for which the brother and father work the boat. In the other two cases, the money to pay for the permit came from the men’s fishing work, that is, the women did not contribute financially to purchase the permit⁷.

From the perspective of the women, the permit was transferred to them for two reasons: a) as a mechanism of inheritance; and b) to transfer the responsibility of performing the paperwork related to the permits. The single woman who bought the permit is not in any of these categories, since a transfer was not made for the permit because she acquired it on her own (Table 4). Having said that, beyond these two reasons that the women identified as a pillar in the decision for the transfer, an aspect that is cross-sectional in these arrangements is financial motivation, since having the permits is something that strengthens the reception of economic resources by the families.

Discussion

In Isla Arena the modifications to the Fishing Law (1992) facilitated the transference of fishing permits to private individuals. In a neoliberal economic model, as is the Mexican case, the possession of fishing permits is restricted to the sectors with highest economic power and which are not always fishermen or women ^{(Cinti et al., 2010)}. To obtain higher income through the subsidies, to ensure a patrimony for the families and to become organized in relation to fishing work, new schemes in the social practices of ownership, possession and rights on the resources were created inside the domestic units, such as the transfer of permits to women. This transference is mediated by kinship relationships, in relation to the formal system of fishing permits ^{(Nunan et al., 2015)}, and they influence the patterns of property and control of fishing resources of men and women ^{(Makalle, 2012)}.

The transfer of permits to women represents a mechanism that allows fishermen and their families to obtain better prices, as well as to attract higher subsidies. Regarding this point, ^{Fernández (2013)} mentions that in Costa Rica the permit holders report wives and close family members without connection to fishing work as day laborers, with the aim of increasing their income in the low-catch season. In Turkey it has been documented that if the husband works for the government, and because those who do cannot have a second job, the vessels are registered in the name of wives to obtain commercial fishing licenses. Although the women work in subsistence fishing activities and the licenses are in their name, they do not participate in the activities that the cooperatives carry out ^{(Göncüoğlu and Ünal, 2011)}.

The risk that is characteristic of fishing work and the possibility of death of the principal provider stimulate the search for mechanisms that guarantee income for the families ^{(Islam and Chuenpagdee, 2013)}. In Isla Arena, one of these mechanisms is the transference of fishing permits to women; in this way, the permanence of the permit is guaranteed, which is conceived as a good that can be inherited in the domestic unit and ensure the family’s patrimony, particularly of the wife, especially in an environment where there is a lack of social security ^{(Britton, 2012)}. The transference of fishing permits to women is also inserted in the logic of work division that allows men to continue with the workday at sea, while he delegates the paperwork to his wife, which represents an extension of their domestic tasks and brings with it a work overload for women.

^{Fraga (1999)} points out that at the moment of assigning fishing property rights men are benefitted and the asymmetries in power relations are accentuated, situation that has emphasized the absence of women in decision making related to resource management ^{(Kleiber, 2014)}. The information obtained in Isla Arena allows observing that property rights can be the starting point to understand women’s decision making power, and together with other factors such as the family composition, the purpose of fishing (subsistence or commercial), and the fishing activities that women perform.

It should be highlighted that this study centered its analysis on domestic units where women are the holders of commercial fishing permits and that the next challenge is having a broader panorama that allows understanding decision making in domestic units where men and women do not have a fishing permit or else only men are permit holders, not only in Isla Arena, but also in other geographic contexts.

The characterization of women permit holders allows observing that women who make decisions are part of domestic units where fishing is done with commercial purposes and which have the economic capital that allows them to hire workers, particularly during the octopus season. They participate actively in activities related to fishing work, taking part not only in the processing phase, but also in the acquisition of inputs or the purchase-sale of fish. This exemplifies that the financial contribution of women has a positive impact in decision making ^{(Fay-Sauni et al., 2008)}, as was reported by ^{Nunan (2006)} in Uganda, where the promotion for women to acquire licenses for vessels caused for them to increase their income and with it they began to make decisions and to speak about things that affected them as women.

The women who make decisions have school-age sons and daughters, representing a higher expenditure for the families, and therefore results in the search for other sources of income. This information agrees with what was found by ^{García Sámano (2015)} for the same study site, who found that although the families have fishing permits, not all perform the same productive activities due to the differences in the sociodemographic composition (age and sex) of the domestic unit. In other localities, such as the northern coast of Ireland, ^{Britton (2012)} found that the women’s power of decision making linked to the fishing industry is related to sociodemographic variables such as age and educational level, the local context and external factors; thus, the increase in economic costs derived from the crisis in fuel motivated the decrease of the white fish fleet, situation that motivated the closing of fish factories where women worked.

Although they process and trade fish, some women permit holders only have power of decision in the activities that they perform, but they are not involved in the activities or income derived from the administration of fishing permits. Even if they receive them as inheritance or as a “gift”, they do not consider them as their own. ^{Agarwal (1999)} points out that when women purchase lands they acquire a greater sense of economic security and of confidence in themselves and, therefore, they improve their ability to negotiate.

The third group of women is the one that does not make decisions. These are part of domestic units where the boats are worked by a male family member, whether the husband or sons, because the fishing activity is directed towards subsistence. They are older compared to those that do make decisions, in addition to having less time with the permit in their name, which shows that the gender roles in society are not static and are affected by social and economic changes at the individual, family and community level ^{(Williams, 2010)}.

Finally, the literature points out that the property rights (access, exploitation, management, exclusion and alignment) are cumulative and are nested; for example, the rights of management cannot be exercised without those of access ^{(Charles, 2005}; ^{Poteete et al., 2012)}. The number of women fishing permit holders is restricted; this is observed in those who occupy principal positions in one of the local organizations of permit holders, since by having the right of access they have been allowed to be in contact with other spheres of power and information and opens the path to spaces linked to decision making that can impact the community management of the resources ^{(Savard and Fraga, 2005}; ^{Meinzen-Dick et al., 1997}; ^{Kleiber 2014)}. This also explains that women who have more time being permit holders are the ones who have a greater capacity in decision making, since their access to the public sphere and to spaces of power is extended with the passing of years.

Conclusions

In this article, the transference of fishing permits from men to women in Isla Arena was documented, as well as the modifications in their ability to make decisions. It is concluded that the differences there are allow understanding variations by them in this sense, with the most important elements to consider being the following: the purpose of fishing (whether for commercial purposes or for subsistence), the family composition, and the type of fishing activities they perform.

Finally, the invitation is to continue documenting these processes and breaking the stereotype of resource management centered in the dominion of the sea – boats, fish, fishermen – ^{(Britton, 2012)}, to design policies that lead to the equality in the use of rights of access ^{(FAO, 2012)} and which, together with more efficient measures for fishing planning, can lead to the sustainable development with a gender perspective.