The Knots project. A co-created and student led project

By: Serena Aloisio, Giorgia Caporale, Giorgia Cerbone, Chiara Gilardi, Sara Morandini (University of Turin, Department of Georesources and Eco-sustainable Business Management)

Title: Protecting marine ecosystems and mitigating gender inequalities through sustainable tourism. The Knots project.

Even though women in the fishing sector might be underrepresented, they still play a key role, but one of the obstacles fisherwomen face is a lack of resources. For example, studies have shown that women make up only a small percentage of overall fishers, 10% in the Mediterranean Sea. In general, fishing as a profession and as a hobby is mainly more associated with men rather than women. Hence, this project aims to create a tool to provide financial support to fisherwomen communities all over the world.

Inspired by ecotourism, this project has the goal of developing a travel guide to help plan trips where there are included a series of activities directly organised by local communities of fisherwomen, including fishing tourism, through this type of tourism, which is less invasive, there will also be positive effects on marine ecosystems. By taking part in these activities the participants will financially support these women and their businesses. The research methodology used to establish this line of project development was a mixture of academic and grey literature, along with more journalistic articles. Due to the possibility of some individuals being limited in taking part in these activities because of inaccessibility, this project includes other ways to support these communities and to aid the sharing of this project a website, (Knots) has been created, where more information and all the ways to take part and support the project can be found.

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This post can be cited as: Aloisio S., Caporale G., Cerbone G., Gilardi C., Morandini S. "Protecting marine ecosystems and mitigating gender inequalities through sustainable tourism. The Knots project", April 2, 2024. The project was co-created during the course "Diritto dell'Ambiente" (M. Poto, J. Hayden, University of Turin, Department of Georesources and Eco-sustainable Business Management, 2024.