Early June, the FAO, in partnership with Too Big To Ignore (TBTI), organised a series of webinars in celebration of World Oceans Week 2021, including on “Unpacking the SSF Guidelines: mainstreaming gender for SSF development strategies”, which shed light on the vital role women play in fisheries.
Cases from Oman, Asia, Mexico, Greenland, India, Nigeria, Malawi and Côte d’Ivoire all showed how crucial organization and networks are for women empowerment, visibility of their contribution, and meaningful participation in decision-making.
Micheline Dion, a woman fish processor from Côte d’Ivoire for more than 20 years, President of the USCOFEPCI, and in charge of the women program in the African Confederation of Artisanal Fishing Organisations (CAOPA), talked about women’s vital role in African small-scale fisheries, and the challenges they faced for making their voices heard within the organization: “At the beginning, in our meetings, advocacy was focused on the concerns of fishermen, but now it is open to women.”
The turning point came in 2012, when CAOPA celebrated the World Fisheries Day in Abidjan with representatives from 16 African countries: “We highlighted the deplorable working conditions of women fish processors. Following this meeting, FAO helped us with a programme of improved ovens - FTT ovens - for fish processing. This has revolutionised our working conditions: the women no longer breathe smoke, make a better-quality product, faster, and use less wood,” explained Micheline Dion.
The webinar, with cases from Oman, Asia, Mexico, Greenland, India, Nigeria, Malawi and Côte d’Ivoire, allowed to underscore how crucial organization and networks are for women empowerment, visibility of their contribution, and meaningful participation in decision-making. Photo: Sara Fröcklin/SSNC.
Every year since 2012, women from CAOPA's member organisations meet to exchange experiences, to choose their own priorities, in order to speak with one voice when CAOPA's advocacy agenda is discussed every year in November, during the World Fisheries Day celebrations: “By coming together first, before the men, by organising ourselves among African women in artisanal fisheries, we have been able to make our voices heard within our organisation,” she emphasized.
Women are also concerned with the management of fisheries resources: “For one thing is obvious: without fish to process, without fish to sell to feed people, there are no women in African artisanal fishing.” Indeed, for African women in fisheries organisations, it is of paramount importance that all policies that affect women in fisheries, - processing and marketing policies, health policies, housing policies, education policies, but also fisheries management policies-, should be aligned.
Mr Audun Lem, Deputy Director of FAO Fisheries Division, in his conclusions to the webinar, highlighted that transformative changes are still needed to modify gender norms and unequal power relations, and insisted that “this is not only the responsibility of women, but men must also become allies towards this change!”
Banner photo: courtesy of CAOPA.
West Africa has pioneered several decades of artisanal fisheries management reform. Yet there are still major obstacles to co-management: a lack of political will reflected in low budgetary allocations; inadequate and poorly targeted support for fisher organizations; poorly defined roles and responsibilities of fishers in co-management; lack of enforcement of inshore exclusive zones; and inadequate defense of human rights and particularly the important role of women.