Training of Trainers - Library - Network of Aquaculture Centres in ...

women in aquaculture and identify areas for intervention have brought out the potential of aquaculture to improvefamily nutrition and economy by suitable gender based intervention in many societies. Lack of focus of thedevelopment institutions on women in developing aquaculture was recognized and the efforts made to spread thismessage among the various Indo-China countries by establishing the women in fisheries network with the supportof the Mekong River Commission supported project has brought major benefits to the region in terms of increasingawareness of the people on gender issues hindering aquaculture development. Scaling up this activity to Asianlevel by the Asian Fisheries Society through the triennial organization of the scientific events on women infisheries since a decade has helped to assess the status of women participation in aquaculture on periodic basis.The movement that started as Women in Fisheries has now transformed itself in to “Gender in fisheries”recognizing the need to lay emphasis on both men and women. The support provided by the World fish centre hashelped in the establishment of Gender and Fisheries network. This network is now an important source ofinformation and a Platform to discuss various issues. These scientific events have provided an opportunity to bringvarious potential issues and provide the information base for various developmental projects. This effort of theAsian Fisheries Society along with the efforts of the Institute of aquaculture, University of Stirling, UK and theAsian Institute of Technology have brought out a number of key issues that need to be considered by the researchand development institutions to intensify developmental programs. Asian Fisheries Society recognized the needto address the gender issues through well planned research and in 2007 global symposium on Gender andFisheries had the theme “Gender and Fisheries: solutions through research”. The selected papers of thissymposium were published in an issue of the journal "Development", totally dedicated to fisheries.Increased burden to women or enhanced status?One of the important questions often asked is whether the introduction of aquaculture has brought more burden towomen along with the routine tasks that they need to carry out in the family or has really increased the position ofwomen within family and her status in the society as she has been able to contribute additional source of income?.Though the time required for management of ponds would depend on the size of pond and the level of technologyadopted, certainly it calls for dedicated involvement of women to get the desired output. The new activityintroduced will always be generally in addition to their normal household activity being carried out, unless thewomen witness the benefit, if not to themselves, but to the family, they consider the activity as a burden. Forexample, in Cambodia women felt that walking long distance to collect feed for fish like termites, azolla, etc. as aburden, particularly in view of the security risks involved in such long distance travel in search of fish food.However, once when the women began to see the benefits from aquaculture in terms of increased easyavailability of fish for consumption as well as a source of income, same groups considered this as the mostpotential activity to help them in solving their problems (Nandeesha et.al.,1994). In many parts of the worldevidences generating indicate that when women are involved in aquaculture, there is considerable improvement infamily nutrition, use of the income generated for the productive areas like education of the children, etc. Further,evidences also indicate that additional skill acquired by women to grow fish and extra income being earned hasbrought them enhanced status within the family as well as the community (Nandeesha and Hanglomong, 1997;Murray, et.al., 1998; Bhujel and Pant, 2004; Bhujel, et.al., 2008; Siason, et.al, 2006; Debashish, et.al., 2001).Development interventions must ensure that women and men in the family have equal access and control on thebenefits emerging from aquaculture.How to enhance women participation in aquaculture ?(a) Enhance access to informationThe key constraint experienced by women is the access to information that helps them to gain confidence to growfish successfully (Kusakabe, et.al., 2003) Most often women are not invited to attend the training programs sincethe target of various programs is men in the family to receive that information/training. Unfortunately, men whoattend the training do not freely share that information with other members in the family. To address this problem,it is suggested to target women in particular. However, in such cases, often the organizers of the training do not134