Abstract
The sustainability of fishing villages is threatened by manpower shortages due to population aging and poor settlement conditions. In the reality of poor fishing villages, the importance of women's labor is more emphasized than that of the past because female workers are key workers in fishing labor, processing and sales of marine products. However, policy support for female fishermen is not sufficient. The reason for this is that policy makers did not properly recognize the labor value of female fishermen. In fact, fishing villages have emphasized the importance of female workforce as a slogan, but there has been no attempt to estimate the labor value. There was not even a review of the methodology for estimating the value of labor that was attempted in similar fields. As a result, the policy importance of female fishermen was underestimated for there was no attempt to evaluate their value even though women had been continuously participating in the fishery from the past. Female fishermen's labor is under the dual labor structure of housework and fishing labor. Therefore, in this study, housework and fishing labor were estimated separately and the total labor value was calculated. The basic data necessary for estimating the labor value of female fishermen were obtained through a survey. The method of estimating the labor value of female fishermen was used in combination with the present income method and the total replacement cost method. As a result of the study, the total labor value of female fishermen was about 4.4 trillion won, which is about half of the total fishery production of 9 trillion won in Korea.