USA – The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish cross-cutting theme on Mainstreaming Gender Equity and Youth Inclusion supports subawardees in advancing gender-responsive aquaculture and fisheries development. In order to gauge subawardees’ needs for resources, trainings, tools, and communications in this area, the Fish Innovation Lab administered the Gender Responsive Aquaculture/Fisheries Development Assessment (GRADA-FIL). The GRADA-FIL is also a learning tool that introduces teams to gender-responsive aquaculture and fisheries activities to further benefit their research and capacity development activities.
A new brief highlights subawardees’ responses to GRADA-FIL questions related to common gender barriers that may be at play at research sites where Fish Innovation Lab activities are being conducted. Subawardees reported several gender barriers operating where they conduct research on aquaculture and fisheries value chains, including that women lack access to the same decision-making power as men, women have less involvement in governance and/or co-management than men, and women have fewer economic and training opportunities than men.
The GRADA-FIL results also suggest a potential need for increased awareness of common gender barriers occurring in aquaculture and fisheries sectors. For example, more than 50% of subawardees reported that they did not know if women may be exploited across aquaculture and fisheries value chains, such as through “sex for fish” exchanges controlled by male fish brokers, or if women tend to have lower yields from aquaculture and fisheries production as compared to men in their research sites.
The GRADA-FIL serves as a first step to increasing gender awareness by introducing Fish Innovation Lab teams to common gender barriers that may present challenges to producing the most impactful results to benefit both men and women aquaculture and fisheries value-chain actors.
Reference (open access):
Mary Read-Wahidi and Kathleen Ragsdale. GRADA-FIL RESULTS AT A GLANCE: FISH INNOVATION LAB RESEARCH. Feed the Future. 2p.
Source: Mississippi State University
