Shantona Rani cleaning mola fish in preparation for cooking. Credit: Worldfish (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
For developing nations, aquaculture is often regarded as an opportunity to provide job and food security. As highlighted in a report by WorldFish and FAO focusing on Bangladeshi women working in homestead pond production and shrimp processing factories, aquaculture also has the potential to empower women.
Perhaps the most obvious way in which Bangladeshi’s women aquaculturalists experience empowerment is through their income. For younger single or unmarried factory women, salaries are an ‘economic lifeline’. In Bangladesh, women tend to be seen as a burden and married off at a young age, whilst “many abandoned women find it difficult to be accepted back into their parental home, especially when they are poor” Afrina Choudhury (WorldFish) explained.
This story was written for - and can be read in full at -The Fish Site (open access).