Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries: The Long Journey to Equality

From beginning to end, GAF5 participants shared the aspirations and frustrations of the long journey to gender equality, and the long way still to go. The greater commitments to gender equality in policies and by aquaculture and fisheries agencies are heartening developments. Of growing alarm, however, is the erosion of women’s positions in mainstream aquaculture and fisheries value chains and increasing difficulties in vanishing traditional resource systems. Attempts are being made to redress this and improve women’s opportunities with new aquaculture and post-harvest technologies and approaches that may carry better prospects and create more equality. Aquaculture and fisheries are very diverse, and so are the societies and gender norms in which they operate, as reflected by many papers that presented diagnoses of specific cases.