Fishing for Empowerment – Engaging women in aquaculture

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By Afrina Choudhury and Cynthia McDougall

Photographs from World Fish

Photograph by Habibul Haque

Gender all too often becomes a preordained criterion for productive work. During a study in Khulna, a male shrimp factory worker justified his male employees procuring a higher salary through this very mindset, “Men are stronger and smarter than women.”

Women have to face such inequalities on a daily basis; it contributes to limiting their involvement in or from benefiting fairly from this profitable and rapidly growing aquaculture sector. Bangladesh is a top performer in aquaculture, ranked as the sixth largest aquaculture producer in the world by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2016[1]. The number of people involved in the sector in Bangladesh has tripled in recent years. However, in a country where almost half of the population is women, less than 1% of women are employed[2] in aquaculture, compared to 10.24% of men. According to the FAO, only 1.4 million women have been able to avail the estimated 17.8 million jobs in the aquaculture and fisheries sector. The numbers illustrate the disadvantage women are subjected to. Women are held back by stereotypes about their abilities, by types of work opportunities being divided up based on gender, by purdah, and by assumptions that domestic work and childcare are solely their responsibilities. Moreover, women lack control over productive resources.

Photograph by Mohammad Mahabubur Rahman

More than Just a Nibble:Netting Benefits for Women

The few areas of aquaculture that women have been able to enter have given them significant benefits, not just in terms of income and food security but also in terms of empowerment. A recent study by FAO and WorldFish called, ‘Women’s Empowerment in Aquaculture: Two Case Studies from Bangladesh’ explored two such areas, production from rural pond aquaculture and processing in urban shrimp factories.

While the study found that women who work in aquaculture often find themselves in low-level, low-paying, undesirable jobs or limited to working in their family ponds near their homes, both types of engagement still provide very important benefits: one a direct income and the other a consistent source of food.

Shrimp factories provide a direct income to many abandoned and destitute women with little or no skills. In fact, women make up 88% of the shrimp processing factory workers but only 1% of shrimp pond owners/ farmers. Other younger women are considered by their families to be less of a burden because of their incomes, so their families are less eager to marry them off. The income also gives the women some economic freedom. Minimum wage is Tk. 4,419 per month ($53) for permanent workers but this is only adhered to by 50% of the shrimp factories. Minimum wage was first established in 2009 and later increased to the current amount in 2014. Contract workers receive wages based on a piece rate system. One 22-year-old female shrimp factory worker explained that her income brings about financial freedom, “We can decorate our homes with better furniture and even buy refrigerators, ceiling fans, stoves, irons and other items that can make our lives more comfortable. The men do not really interfere with our salary.” Their male counterparts also believe that women use their income for the family wellbeing.

In rural pond aquaculture, women are better able to meet the food needs of their family because of their homestead ponds. They no longer have to wait for men to bring fish home to cook. The pond provides a convenient and constant source of fish. Furthermore, cultivating many species of fish together makes it easier to meet the dietary preferences of different household members. Moreover, women are given more decision making power; they can decide which fish will be sold, which will be consumed and when to eat and sell. A 25-year old female pond farmer details how she strategized to save her family from expenses during her daughter’s wedding. “We will not be able to afford enough fish to feed the guests during my daughter’s wedding and so I have decided not to harvest the fish this year. We have decided to save them until the occasion.” She thus decided to save the fish in the pond and let them continue to grow till her daughter’s wedding.

Most importantly, aquaculture allows these women to aspire to a better future, for themselves and for their children, to invest in insurance schemes and to save to buy labor saving household appliances, and even land and businesses for their sons and spouses.

Photograph by Mohammad Mahabubur Rahman
Photograph by Mohammad Mahabubur Rahman

Generating income and improving production increases women’s value and recognition by their spouses. This is most evident in the shrimp factories. Some men in the study are even willing to adjust their expectations away from the conventional stereotypes or assumptions about (only) women being responsible for domestic work or about women ‘catering’ to their spouse’s needs. They do so because they value the income that the woman is bringing in. Some men in the study are also willing to be flexible about social norms limiting women’s mobility, because the women have to move daily to and fro the shrimp factories and the marketplace.
This illustrates some ways in which men value women’s contributions and embrace more gender equitable norms when they are able to see tangible benefits, like increases in production or income.

Unlike the shrimp factories, women’s contributions to the household ponds do not provide direct income; they reduce the family’s food bill and generate income from selling fish. However these benefits are most of the time not linked to women’s contributions but to the family as a whole – and as such the value ascribed to the women’s contribution may be somewhat less than when women earn a direct income. The study revealed however, that those women pond farmers who manage to increase production as a result of their new ideas and knowledge did gain the trust of their spouses. Their spouses now allow them to decide on reinvestment and resource use. A 45-year-old husband detailed how his own participation in a nursery training propelled his decision to allow his wife to do the same. She had already been trained on nursery management and started a nursery in their pond. She was so successful in using her knowledge that now he gives her complete autonomy over the pond. She has now ventured into shrimp production from the profits she made.

Photograph by AWM Anisuzzaman

Treading uncertain waters: aquaculture may not be enough

Despite all these benefits, many women continue to face barriers to engaging in the aquaculture sector. In particular gender barriers mean that women tend to be able to engage primarily only in unpaid or low paid, lower status work. Moreover, involvement in aquaculture has not been able to shift women’s strategic freedom, such as the ability to take on any role they desire, beyond the stereotypes that guide their lives. This represents significant limits to women’s empowerment in and through aquaculture and means that women continue to be subject to unfairness and discrimination in the sector.

Women in the study find the prospects of promotion dismal in shrimp factories, regardless of their performance or pursuing a higher education. Persisting stereotypes have too strong a hold on the factory employers. “They [the factory owners] will never make us women supervisors. We understand and have the skills but they will not make us…. Men are usually supervisors,” a 27-year-old female worker expounded, “We do good work, they praise us but do not praise us too much because then they will have to promote us.” The working conditions in the shrimp factories also continue to be “smelly and disgusting” but it is often the only work opportunity the women have.

Pond aquaculture has other challenges for women. A 35-year-old woman pond farmer explained, “We women need the support of our families. We need to plan with the family. We cannot just go to training out of our own free will. It needs their decision also.” Women also found it difficult to convince their husbands to let them apply their new training knowledge in their family ponds, so demonstrating success somehow is crucial. “We cannot keep to our plans if we do not get the inputs we need,” explained a 30-year-old woman pond farmer. “We do not have money, we have to ask our husbands, we have to borrow and pay interest”. Another woman explained why they cannot do as they please. “Men have more respect. We have to give men priority and respect. We women have to be careful that people do not talk and the respect for their men is destroyed.”

Reeling in a Better Future

Photograph by Habibul Haque

The involvement of women in aquaculture production or even in employment opportunities – on their own – are important, but are not sufficient to empower women in the sector. This means that investments and policy or development interventions need to think beyond ‘targeting’ (involving) women with new innovations, technologies, skills development or even employment prospects. Opportunities for women’s engagement—and incomes–need to be complemented with investments that address restrictive gender norms and stereotypes. This can include capacity building that works with men and women to promote gender equity and awareness programs or media campaigns to address underlying harmful attitudes and practices. Also incorporating and enforcing gender-related policies will create infrastructures that allow women to enter and benefit from better viable livelihoods in aquaculture. Understanding and addressing normative restrictions can help equitably engage women in this sector. While involvement in aquaculture does have some empowerment benefits, it will be truly empowering for women when harmful norms will no longer restrict them from having the strategic freedom to pursue and benefit equally from any work or innovation they desire.

WorldFish through the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri Food Systems (FISH) is testing ways to shift norms that hinder the equitable advancement of women:

The cases were funded by the FAO to feed into and inform the FAO Blue Growth Regional Initiative in South Asia; they were undertaken as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems (FISH) 

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