Integrated Lake Management

Lessons

Women and fisheries

Women have traditionally been marginalised within the male-dominated fishing sector in Uganda. However, women play a critical role in poverty reduction within households and in natural resource management, and therefore must be targeted for support for effective poverty reduction within fisheries communities. Empowerment through access to decision-making and fishing boat licences are two mechanisms through which the livelihoods of women in fisheries communities have been improved. Key lessons in promoting benefits for women from fisheries include:

1. Creating enabling policies and laws for women: Providing a policy and legal framework for the increased participation of women in managing and accessing fisheries resources provides a solid basis for gender-equity.
2. Increasing representation of women on decision-making bodies: Women are particularly vulnerable to the social poverty of powerlessness and voicelessness. ILM addressed this issue by lobbying for legal allocations of places for women in key decision-making structures of management institutions.
3. Increasing access to fisheries through fishing boat licensing: Women can own a boat and a licence, and hire boat crew, although it is not generally culturally acceptable for women to fish themselves. Increasing the number of women who benefit from boat licences requires awareness raising, empowerment and access to savings and credit.
4. Improving capacities and confidence: Awareness raising and capacity building of women is important to ensure that are aware of their legal rights and have the confidence to participate in decision-making.
5. Improving governance for gender equity: Systems of transparency and good governance both support the participation of women and ensure that women are legally empowered to bring the institutions and processes to account.