Women’s Space in the Fish Port Tambler Complex and the Value-Chain Nodes of the Fishing Industry in General Santos City, Philippines

This study uses ethnography to describe the spaces of women in the Fish Port Tambler Complex of General Santos City, and investigates the points of convergence with and divergence from the value-chain nodes of the tuna fishing industry. As host to a key local industry, this fish port in General Santos City was estimated to generate at least 42,000 jobs in 2014. This landscape of jobs, however, needs to be sex disaggregated and direct observation in the fish port shows the limited spaces that women fill-in and the dominance of male workers in the vicinity. Guided by the standpoint of Henri Lefebvre on social spaces, the results of the present study showed that as women occupied spaces in the fish port complex, they demonstrated their agency and capacities as income earners, as friends to fellow workers, and as allies in the fish marketing processes. Although their spaces were marginal compared to the kind and extent of spaces that men had in the area, and, largely, their spaces did not interface with the conceived formal value chain nodes in the tuna industry, these women did not consider themselves marginalised in the Fish Port Tambler Complex. The ethnographic result of the study, when viewed through the gender lens of Longwe (1991), however, is interpreted either as a manifestation of hope for better livelihood opportunities, or as a call for increased capacities to enable these women to critically see through their current spaces and situations in the fish port complex.