“Fishing Na Everybody Business”: Women's Work and Gender Relations in Sierra Leone's Fisheries

Abstract

While small-scale fisheries in many developing countries is “everybody's business,” a gendered labor division concentrates production in the hands of fishermen while women dominate postharvest processing and retailing. The production bias of fisheries management programs has not only largely overlooked the role of fisherwomen, but also marginalized “fish mammies” in terms of resources and training. This study draws on three in-country fisheries surveys, as well as interviews and focus groups, and employs a gender-aware sustainable livelihood framework to make visible the economic space occupied by women in Sierra Leone's small-scale fisheries. The study highlights how women's variegated access to capital and resources interacts with social norms and reproductive work and argues for more social and economic investment in women's fish processing and reproductive work enabling them to reconcile both roles more effectively.

• Fisheries
• gender relations
• Sierra Leone
• women and development
• poverty

JEL Codes::

• Q22
• B54

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Andy Thorpe is Professor of Development Economics at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His present research interests are based on natural resources, particularly fisheries, and he has undertaken consultancy and research work in this field in Latin America, India, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central Asia.

Nicky Pouw is Assistant Professor of Development Economics at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her present research interests are based on poverty and inequality, economics of well-being, women's role in the economy, and inclusive food chains, and she has undertaken consultancy and research work in this field in Sub-Saharan Africa and Sri Lanka.

Andrew Baio is Fisheries/Environmental Resource Economist – Lecturer at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone; National Fisheries Expert at UNIDO–Sierra Leone and consultant for national and international institutions. Andrew attended Christ the King College (CKC), Bo, Sierra Leone. He furthered his education at Njala University College (BSc); University of Bergen, Norway (MPhil); University of Portsmouth, UK (PgD, PhD). His research focuses on sustainable environmental resource stewardship in tropical ecosystems.

Ranita Sandi is based at the Institute of Marine Biology and Oceanography (IMBO), Fourah Bay College at the University of Sierra Leone. She works on integrating gender into environmental decision making and has worked with women in fisheries development programs. She also counsels victims of gender-based violence.

Ernest Tom Ndomahina is Associate Professor of Marine Biology the University of Sierra Leone and has been the Director of the Institute of Marine Biology and Oceanography (IMBO) since 1999. He has worked on fisheries issues and has also been engaged for many years in environmental impact assessment and the study of natural resources. He has undertaken work in these areas for many international organizations including the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the European Union, the Department for International Development (UK), the International Development Research Council (IDRC) Canada, GOPA, USAID, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Thomas Lebbie is Research Teaching Assistant at the Institute of Marine Biology and Oceanography (IMBO), Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. Prior to this, he was a researcher on the Development Partnership in Higher Education Project 2.01 between 2007 and 2010, in which he worked with various national and international scholars in the artisanal fisheries sector of Sierra Leone. Thomas is a postgraduate student in fisheries governance at the University of Sierra Leone, and works with national and local partners to sustainably manage the four Marine Protected Areas in Sierra Leone.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors are grateful to the comments made on a previous draft of this article by Irene van Staveren and five anonymous Feminist Economics reviewers. The authors also thank the British Council Development Partnerships in Higher Education [DelPHE] program for funding the fieldwork for this study (Project 2.01: Reducing Poverty and Enhancing Equity in the Artisanal Fisheries of Sierra Leone, 2008–10).

Notes

1 Most pertinent was the provision of gender-responsive advisory services and support in identifying and developing new livelihood opportunities for women. The other two investments related to supporting gender-responsive, community-level resource management bodies and enabling marginalized groups to access new external markets.

2 Sierra Leone also possesses an industrial fishery, comprising forty-three vessels and landing 13,642 tons (around 10 percent of the total national catch) in 2006. However, its contribution to local employment and livelihoods is marginal since more than 70 percent of the industrial catch is transhipped and never lands in Sierra Leone.

3 These respondents worked as: (1) fishers (2,010 respondents); (2) processors (1,866); and (3) transporters (510) in the fisheries sector, as well as (4) randomly chosen individuals (both fishers and non-fishers) and (5) households (both fishers and non-fishers). Unfortunately, the dataset did not capture information on time allocated to paid and unpaid labor and reproductive tasks.

4 Given the high proportion of women-headed households in Sierra Leone in the wake of the civil war, men in the wider family network would often contribute fish.

5 Interestingly, Béné and Merten's study casts women as the progenitor in such relationships, a position adopted by Carolyn Lwenya and Ernest Yongo (2012) in a more recent study.

6 The authors are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for making this comment.