Recognising and strengthening women
The group met on 15 October 2008 at 16 hrs and the discussions continued until 17.30. While it had originally been foreseen that the theme would be discussed in two groups using different languages, only one group was eventually formed due to the relatively low turn‐out of participants (18 in total, including facilitators). The discussions were held in French and English. Informal translation was provided to those participants that were not bilingual. The group was facilitated by Ms Yvette Die‐Quadi (FAO) and co‐moderated by Ms Nalini Nayak. Ms Lena Westlund was the rapporteur. ROLES AND RECOGNITION The group started by identifying the different roles that women play in small‐scale fisheries. There are in principal three main ways in which women engage in post‐harvest work: as a partner of their fisher husband, as an independent operator (trader/processor) buying fish from fishers other than their husband or as an employee at a processing plant. It was noted that the visibility of women and their contributions to the sector is low and that their status needs to be defined (as fish mongers, fish processors, etc). The visibility of women in fisheries needs to be improved, both with regard to the status of women as women and the roles that women play. One difficulty in this context is the lack of gender segregated data and statistics. Whilst there are exceptions, there is generally a fairly clear division of labour in the fisheries sector and many family businesses are still built on this concept; men go to fish at sea and women take care of the fish once landed on shore. These complementary roles of women and men should be recognised. In West Africa, it was noted that the role, duties and contributions of women have changed ...
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