Sustainability Requires Equality: The Women in Aquaculture Scholarship Program
Many cultures around the world have their own version of the famous saying: “Give someone a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach them how to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime.”
Our team at Kvarøy Arctic strongly believes in the core of this message: educating people means empowering them. This fundamental idea, paired with our forward-looking vision for a sustainable future with abundant, climate-friendly, protein sources that nourish the world’s population, led us to create the Women in Aquaculture program. Launched in 2020, this program was an official expression of our will to empower underrepresented people in the aquaculture sector around the globe.
Why Scholarships?
Research shows us that women play a crucial role in aquaculture, comprising nearly half of fishery and aquaculture workers worldwide. Yet, they are often given precarious, low-paying, and low-status roles—or, shockingly, they’re not paid at all. This perpetuates a cycle of gender bias across a growing socially, economically, and environmentally important industry.
To achieve gender equity in our sector, it’s fundamental to ensure gender equality, which means uplifting currently underrepresented people. In the case of aquaculture, one of the most underrepresented groups of people are women, and the biggest barriers to their growth in the sector are lack of access to education, training opportunities, and financial support.
That’s why, for the third year in a row, we’ll award two scholarships supporting the education, research, and career development of women in the field of aquaculture. One of our scholarships is dedicated to an applicant from any country globally and the other is designated for applicants from countries in Africa.
The mission of our Women in Aquaculture program is to help women learn about the future of food and stewardship in sustainable aquaculture. By providing scholarship funds for education and research, Kvarøy Arctic aims to support women’s careers by preparing them for leadership roles in the global seafood production sector. Kvarøy Arctic’s management team designed this program with the goal of eliminating gender boundaries and creating equitable opportunities for women building careers in aquaculture to participate in decision-making processes in the seafood industry.
The application process is open until July 1, 2022. Women from all around the world are welcomed to apply. The two winners for this year will be announced on August 1. The program provides a $10,000 scholarship to each of the two recipients for education and scientific research. Awardees will also have the opportunity to gain practical experience as interns on Kvarøy Arctic’s sustainable salmon farm.
The Scholarship Committee
To ensure fair disposition, we invited women who are already transforming aquaculture to join the scholarship committee. Julie Kuchepatov from Seafood and Gender Equality (SAGE) and Imani Black from Minorities in Aquaculture (MIA), together with Kvarøy Artic’s management team, oversee the annual scholarship fund.
SAGE is a non-profit initiative founded by Julie Kuchepatov. SAGE’s goal is to work towards a more diverse, inclusive, ethical, and sustainable seafood industry. "Two things women in aquaculture desperately need are access to funding and practical experience. The Kvarøy Arctic Women in Aquaculture Scholarships provide both and signal a strong belief that women will continue to innovate and lead the sector into a bright, blue future," explains Julie.
Former oyster farmer, Imani Black, is an experienced shellfish aquaculture
biologist, who recently founded MIA in order to champion women and diversity in the aquaculture sector. “Minorities In Aquaculture aims to create a more diverse aquaculture industry by educating minority women on the restoration and sustainability efforts that aquaculture provides for our local and global seafood industries,” shares Imani.
Collaborating with these two incredible, like-minded organizations who have the same mission as Kvarøy Arctic, shows how valuable it is to connect women within the sector. “We truly believe that world problems like gender equality, sustainability, fighting hunger, and climate change go hand-in-hand. And sustainable aquaculture done right plays a key role in combating all these challenges”, explains our CEO, Alf-Gøran Knutsen.
After the Women in Aquaculture Scholarship Program
Since the beginning of the program, nearly 500 women from more than 30 countries have applied for the scholarship. Hannah Krohn, Marwa Mechalaoui, Opemipo Oyebadejo, and Marta Carvalho were the first scholarship recipients.
We love to keep in touch with our scholarship recipients and recently had a catch-up zoom call with two of them! You can check out the voice recordings from that inspiring conversation.
“Receiving the scholarship helped me realize that there are people out there who are noticing that women in aquaculture are struggling. And after seeing the
struggles, those people decided to try to support women’s growth in the sector. I
see Kvarøy Arctic as the ambassador of women in aquaculture,” shared Opemipo Oyebadejo from Nigeria.
“The scholarship gave me valuable recognition and an opportunity for networking within the sector. I managed to deepen my research on finding novel omega-3 sources for aquaculture feeds and to join important international conferences in person,” explained Marta Carvalho from Portugal.
Gender Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow
Data shows that economic and societal growth is interconnected with women’s rights and gender equality. For example, UN Women reported that in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries, half of the economic growth over the past 50 years is attributed to girls having better access to education.
Empowering women in the economy and closing gender gaps in the world of work are also key factors to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in which Goal 5 is to achieve gender equality, and Goal 8 is to promote full and productive employment and decent work for all. Other goals include ending poverty (Goal 1), building food security (Goal 2), ensuring health (Goal 3) and reducing inequalities (Goal 10).
Having more equality for women in the industry will help the aquaculture sector reap many benefits in the long-term and the industry will be stronger because of it. Join us in this important mission by supporting our products and sharing this article.
