Key factors affecting access to resources and control over them
Household availability and allocation of resources
Access to and quality of extension services
At the micro-level, the aquaculture sector can be arranged into community and household levels. When formulating plans and/or projects for specific areas, information is needed for both levels. The key issues regarding gender which need to be taken into account at this stage, are examined in the following sections.
There are many factors at the community level which influence men's and women's activities and their access to and control over resources: the general economic conditions, the nature of government bureaucracies, socio-cultural factors, familial norms and religious beliefs, legal parameters, training and education. Most factors will not be amenable to change by a project. Therefore, an assessment should be made on whether and how these factors will affect or can be affected by a project.
Generally speaking, activities should focus on the community as a whole, with equal importance accorded to addressing the differing needs of men and women. Special women's projects should be the exception rather than the rule, in order to avoid the isolation and marginalisation of women. It is equally important to tackle the weaknesses in gender-sensitivity within existing institutions and services. Only in cases where a high degree of sexual segregation and separation of productive roles exists or there is a clear case of positive discrimination in a local community, will such components be necessary.
A community is made up of different types of households. However, a "household" is not a homogeneous undifferentiated grouping of people with a production and consumption function, i.e. with shared and equal access to resources for production and benefits from it. In many cases, individual household members may have different production priorities.
The relative bargaining power of the two sexes within the household will influence the allocation of productive resources as much as purely economic considerations do.
It is necessary to study all the main actors in aquaculture and understand the extent of interrelationships between men and women with regard to labour, income and transfers in kind (fish, clothing, etc.). As a result, different aquaculture systems can be identified, not only on the basis of the intensity of the aquaculture system, but also on the extent to which men and/or women are involved in aquaculture.
- Dual aquaculture system; Both husband and wife are fish farmers but they have separate ponds. This situation often occurs in pert-urban areas, where the husband has a full-time occupation other than farming. He contributes some labour himself and hires labour (especially for pond construction) if needed. The wife usually feeds, fertilizes and manages his ponds. In exchange for her contribution, she is often given another pond over which she has complete control. The pond yield is hers.
- Male aquaculture system; Fish ponds are controlled by the husband but the wife provides a significant amount of labour.
- Female aquaculture system; This situation occurs in female-headed households where ponds are taken over by widows, or in case men have migrated and have relegated fish farming to their wives. There are also exceptional cases of divorced, single, or married women who have started fish farming on their own.
Projects should thus address the contribution of different actors in fish farming and their remuneration. Neglect of this "rule" may obscure the fact that what is in the best interests of the household may not be in the best interests of its members. The unpaid family labour of women or of younger members may increase the income, status and living standards of the household, but it may not be rewarded with an equitable share of the benefits. In this case, women often react by minimizing their input into aquaculture. This can affect the project or sector negatively.
Key questions: What types of household structures are there in the community 7 What percentage do they make up of the total number of households? Are all household types equally reached with the information on aquaculture?
Demographic information at the household level is an indicator of differences between households on needs, resources and constraints on production. The appropriateness of an aquaculture system will depend partly on the composition of the household and their labour availability. Generally speaking, large households constitute a pool of labour. Female-headed households (about one third of all households in Southern Africa) are usually smaller and thus face a bigger labour constraint. However, it is important to know the type of household they head. For example, husbands may have migrated and may be sending remittances home regularly. On the other hand, there are widowed or divorced women who do not receive any material support. Female-headed households are often sub-divided into three categories:
- de lure female headed household where the head is either unmarried, divorced or widowed;
- de facto female headed household, because of male migration;
- periodically female headed household which may be one of several units attached to an adult male through polygamous marriage, or households where male migration is seasonal.
Female-headed households should thus not be grouped together, as they may have different needs and constraints.
By introducing new employment and income opportunities, aquaculture may reduce migration and thus affect the composition of the household.
Key questions: Where are the suitable sites for ponds in relation to the village? And the sites of men's and women's major activities (e.g. agriculture, herding and watering of cattle, collection of firewood, fetching drinking water) ? Considering the location of other activities, who would find it easier to adopt fish farming -- men or women?
The location of suitable sites for fish ponds is physically constrained by the need for water resources adjacent to suitable land. Villages as residential areas are often separated from farm land and fish ponds. The distance between the village and the ponds, as well as between the fields of both men and women and the ponds, determines the time required to visit the ponds. If ponds are located at a distance from all the other major activities of a household, and thus special trips are required to visit them, women will be disadvantaged -- as time is a bigger constraint for them than for men.
When the extension service is oriented mainly toward men, they are the early adopters; women may have to be content with less suitable sites. Moreover, they may experience more theft in their ponds because they are further away from the village.
Key questions: How is access to resources (land, water, labour, inputs) and control over them regulated? What needs and opportunities exist for increasing women's access to resources? Hove men and women been consulted in identifying such needs and opportunities? Can an aquaculture project affect women's access to resources/and control over them?
Besides factors at the macro-level which affect access to and control over resources (like institutional structures, legal parameters, training and education, etc.) there are also community-level factors. Class stratification is characterized by a hierarchical distribution of social power, income and productive resources, while kinship systems are mainly concerned with resource allocation and its use - which lead to gender differences in access to productive resources.
Often, planners are concerned about the incompatibility of matriliny and male development because of their insecurity of tenure associated with it. In matrilineal systems the couple often settles in the wife's village upon marriage. The husband thus gains access to land and water required for aquaculture in his wife's village. The dissolution of the marriage means that the man loses such access as well as the activities he has developed. Therefore, it was often believed that this type of residence, which is related to the matrilineal system, inhibits aquaculture development.
Although matrilineal systems are now an exception, they have received more interest than the more common patrilineal systems. Moreover, evidence shows that the large majority of men manipulate the matrilineal system once aquaculture proves its benefits. The question is thus whether women can, to the same extent as men, find ways around the patrilineal system and gain access to the necessary resources and reduce the insecurity of tenure which is inherent in the patrilineal system.
Women's ability to gain access to resources within a community and within rural households depends not only on the kinship system or the class to which they belong, but also on their marital status, motherhood and age.
During project design, class or kinship systems which bar women's access to productive resources in the project area must be identified. The project should find ways to deal with these barriers, either bypassing them or by modifying project expectations.
Key questions: Does aquaculture development induce changes in resource availability for male and female users? How are these resources allocated within the household ? How much of these resources are men and women prepared to make available for aquaculture?
Fish farming is often a supplementary activity for small-scale farmers. The assumption is that idle
resources are made productive through aquaculture. However, if more intensive aquaculture systems are introduced, shifts in resource allocation (e.g. land, labour, capital) may take place.
Households make rational use of their available resources. Since men and women within the same household may have different production priorities, bargaining positions within the household will influence the allocation of resources by sex. For example, many men have adopted small-scale fish farming, which was introduced as a male activity. There was supposedly no resource competition for men since they had idle land, labour and on-farm by-products. In practice, feeding and pond management is often done by women, adding to their heavy work load. Conscious of the opportunity costs of working for their husbands, women will commit themselves to aquaculture only if they consider their remuneration sufficient. It is difficult for a project to intervene directly in the distribution of aquaculture benefits between household members. On the other hand, if women neglect feeding and pond management because they do not receive fair compensation for their efforts, aquaculture production may go down. Therefore, this aspect could be taken up for discussion during extension visits/meetings as well as in preparing extension materials.
Another implication of the heavy workload of women is that the opportunity cost of their time is higher than that for men. If their decisions are based primarily on economic grounds, women will adopt fish farming only if it is more rewarding than the activities and incomes foregone. However, other aspects (e.g. household food security and the variety of available relishes) play an important role in the decision to adopt aquaculture.
In rural areas, access to land is determined by the kinship system. Women usually have use rights to land, but do not actually control it. The implication is that they must obtain the agreement on the use of the land of their husbands or male relatives first. In case women want to use the land for a different activity like fish farming, they need to obtain permission again. There are examples of women in pert-urban areas who wanted their own ponds but failed to get their husbands' permission - the latter feared that the wives would concentrate on their own ponds and neglect the husbands'.
Planning should be done in close collaboration with other users of the resources required for aquaculture. Women are often the users affected. For example, before the adoption of fish farming, women may have used those water resources for drawing drinking water, washing dishes and laundry or soaking cassava. Extension agents may discourage women from doing their washing or soaking of cassava in ponds. Moreover, the water level in wells may be reduced through aquaculture development. As a result, women will have to look for other sources of water and possibly have to travel further to obtain them.
On-farm by-products which can be used as an input in fish farming are often controlled by women since they do the food processing. They can thus decide whether and how much to use for fish farming or to keep it for other uses (e.g. maize bran for poultry) which may be more beneficial to them.
Men generally have closer contacts with extension agents than women, and consequently get easier access to fingerlings. When there is a shortage of government supplied fingerlings, they will have to be bought from other fish farmers who usually charge higher prices than the official government price. This may be a disadvantage to women since they usually have less capital available than men.
Since women generally face more resource constraints than men, it is often suggested that they should pool their scarce resources and start fish farming in groups. But field experience has shown that such groups are not always successful. Promoters of fish farming have not always taken into account the fact that women are not a homogeneous group and are divided among themselves along lines such
as age, wealth, social standing and ethnicity. Additional problems are related to the fact that it is frequently outsiders who have identified the needs of the groups, their objectives, pace of development, purpose and mode of operation. Therefore, collective fish farming undertaken by women's groups is not comparable to male farmers owning individual fish ponds.
Key questions: Are both men and women reached by the extension service? Are they given appropriate information? Are the extension agents aware of the different needs and constraints that men and women are facing?
The person who disseminates information on fish farming can determine who receives it. This in turn may determine who takes up fish farming and who gains from it. Moreover, extension material often says who the fish farmer is: photographs, slides, drawings, usually showing men working on fish ponds.
Extension agents often assume that fish farmer husbands pass on information to their wives, especially when it concerns "feeding and management" since this is their wives' responsibility. Experience shows that in actual practice, little information trickles across between husbands and wives. Therefore, it is necessary that extension agents should have direct contact with women as well.
The attitude of extension agents, and their lack of awareness (even wrong ideas) about women's constraints and needs in fish farming, has contributed to the fact that women are not reached at all. Sometimes they are reached, but do not receive the same treatment as men. In Rwanda, for example, women gave the extensionists lower ratings for helpfulness than men did.
A purposefully designed communication process should therefore be formulated for men and women so that both get equal access to fish farming information. Some elements in designing a gender-sensitive extension approach are:
- A survey carried out by extension personnel, which describes the delivery of aquaculture extension services to men and women. The survey should include contacts with extension workers, attendance at group meetings and demonstrations, and participation in training courses by sex. The respondents should be a sample of fish farmers, their spouses as well as non-fish farmers (a stratified sample of male- and female-headed-households). The reason for including the last group is to determine whether everyone had equal chances to receive information on fish farming when it was first introduced. Discussion of the results can help awareness of a gender-balanced extension approach.
Recommendations for improving the delivery of aquaculture extension services to women:
* Consider the feasibility of village-level training. As most women cannot leave their families for a week at a time because of their substantial workload and their responsibilities around their homes, one could plan to implement training programmes to reach the women where they gather at health centres, under five clinics, local grinding mills, etc..
* When meetings conflict with important domestic duties such as fetching water, the women cannot attend. Women's daily and seasonal schedules should be taken into account when the extension service plans activities.
* Often women have had less schooling than men. Written extension or training materials as well as training courses in English (language other than the local language) are thus less effective for women than for men.
- Usually a male fish farmer is selected as "contact farmer", "model farmer" or for on-farm farmer-managed trials by extension workers. The farmers and their spouses should be asked who actually performs each operation. Often, women carry out many of the tasks in aquaculture and should therefore receive instructions directly.
Moreover, extension workers should receive instructions about which household types they must focus on for trials or as contact farmers. The various "types" for example, are: resource-poor and rich male farmers, resource-poor and rich female farmers, and women as both household heads and wives. Farmers do not get information on fish farming only from extension workers. Where the extension services have to operate on a limited budget, and face transport and personnel constraints, farmer-to-farmer extension becomes more and more important. Since men and women may have separate informal communication circuits, it is crucial to select men and women from a diversity of backgrounds.
- When analyzing farmer-managed trials for differences in fish farming skills between men and women, it is imperative that they have similar access to resources and are in the same life-cycle situation. Comparisons between male and female farmers in terms of management and yields are valid only then.
Recognition of these differences can also lead to recommendations for multiple technologies. For example, women in the Central African Republic constrained by labour, cash and lack of extension advice found it difficult to raise catfish, because of the recurring costs of fish feed, fingerlings and tight feeding schedules. Instead, the low-input, low-cost tilapia better suited their situation.
- Once the project has been successful in reaching female farmers, illustrated extension pamphlets or slide shows could be prepared to disseminate the information obtained. They should point out why it is important to reach women as well as men and present methods to involve women as contact farmers and in farmer-managed trials. They should discuss how male extension staff can work with female farmers.
Key questions: What tasks (in agriculture, aquaculture, household) are performed and by which members? Are the peak and slack periods of various household members taken into account when planning extension? What positive/negative labour effects will the introduction of a new technology or a more intensive system have on men and women? Where women's workload is a constraint to the uptake of fish farming, is it possible to collaborate with other projects and introduce measures to ease their workload ?
Too often, planners have failed to recognize women's roles in male aquaculture systems. Both male and female activities must be specified, because the interrelationships can affect or be affected by a project. Separate activity profiles should be made for each project setting and distinct population groups in the area. A general typology of the division of labour in aquaculture will be used as an example to show the relationships.
In small-scale fish farming, men and women often join hands in pond construction. While men do the heavier work, women often transport dirt or prepare meals if they hire labourers. As mentioned before, women and children are usually responsible for feeding and pond management. Men apply manure to the ponds and/or make compost. Pond harvesting is a family affair. Where seine nets are used, men pull the nets. Women use basins to empty ponds and baskets to catch the remaining fish. Marketing of fish is done mostly by women, and they have always dominated in fish processing.
Targeting improved technologies efficiently demands an understanding of who is likely to use the technology. For example, both men and women should be addressed when improving dike construction or raising feeding and fertilizer levels since they both participate. Adoption of the advice will depend on the work it requires and whether the benefits will be substantial for both.
Since men and women often carry out different tasks in agriculture, they may have different peak and slack periods. This should be taken into account when planning aquaculture activities and extension programmes.
A change from extensive to more intensive fish farming may also change the division and allocation of labour. In agriculture men act more involved in cash cropping, likewise men may take over women's duties in aquaculture when it becomes more market oriented. If this results in women having less access to fish for home consumption, it may have a negative effect on family welfare. In that case it would be advisable to keep at least one pond which can be used to fish for home consumption.
The introduction of special processing facilities off-farm or near the market is often not acceptable to women. Processing at home is preferred because women are able to combine processing activities with other domestic duties. The development of industrial processing, which is often a consequence of the introduction of commercial aquaculture, has frequently excluded women from an important source of income.
There are very few women fish farmers (pond owners). A problem often cited is that women are heavily burdened by other activities and face a role conflict when aquaculture is added to the burden. Moreover, pond construction is considered a man's job, for which women would have to hire labour. A more fundamental problem is that fish farming has always been introduced as a male activity. Since men have received knowledge, resources such as tools and fingerlings and credit as well, communities perceive fish farming as a male activity. Women thus have to overcome stereo-typing before engaging in fish farming.
If the benefit of aquaculture is demonstrated to women, ways of easing women's other burdens could be considered. If women spend less time on fetching water or fuel and on preparing food, they could possibly free more time and labour for fish farming. Active cooperation with other development projects in the area and integration with other sectors, should be pursued.
Key questions: Who allocates productive resources (land, water, labour, money, inputs)? Who decides when and how many fish to take for home consumption and/or for sale? Who prioritizes how the income from fish farming will be distributed? How do these decisions relate to the members' contribution to aquaculture?
Women's role in aquaculture production depends partly on the intra-household decision-making
process. In some areas, men decide on who will carry out what tasks in the household. Decisions concerning the timing and quantity of fish to be harvested, the fish to be consumed by the household, the sale of fish, and the distribution of proceeds influence women's motivations to contribute to aquaculture production. The owner of the pond -- usually a man -- consults his wife on these matters, but he is the sole decision-maker.
There are also examples of women and children fishing in the pond without informing the husband, or hiding fish during a complete drainage. This happens when women do not agree with the decisions taken. They then seize the initiative to get their "equitable share".
Key questions: Who provides the production factors (land, labour, inputs, money) for fish farming and who gains the benefits? Is the balance between contributions and benefits likely to change when a more intensive aquaculture system is introduced ?
The analysis of the costs and benefits of different aquaculture systems should take gender into account. It is important to know who contributes to fish farming, who controls it, who gets the benefits -and relate the work done to the benefits obtained.
In practice, it seems that in small-scale fish farming this is not a big issue. The labour input is rather low, while the fish is often consumed within the household; the proceeds, if any, pay for household needs. In more intensive aquaculture systems which require higher inputs, it is imperative that a cost-benefit analysis includes a profile of the division of labour, as well as an "access and control" profile of the benefits. If the aquaculture system relies heavily on family labour while the family has no control over the benefits, its viability and sustainability is questionable.
