There are several production-related factors which can encourage or impede women's participation in fish farming:
It is clear from the study that women in both Chibote and Bule have heavier workloads than men. This is due to two factors. One is the sexual division of labour that assigns the domestic role to women. In the second place the staple food cassava is harvested and processed throughout the year making women's work repetitive and time consuming. Therefore women have very little time to spend on fish farming.
The study also revealed that women do not have the power to assign tasks in a household. They do so only when their husbands are absent. It is appropriate to conclude that unless fish farming is seen as a priority in a household, it may not receive serious consideration. This applies to both men and women, the difference being that with women, the owner of a pond has no power to decide.
Availability of land: Easy access to land encourages participation. Men and women in Musonda Bule were free to choose their own sites for the ponds; it was not necessary for anyone to allocate the land.
Availability of labour: Labour must be easily available at a cost which members of a community can afford. Men and women in Musonda Bule had easy access to labour. Both men and women paid for pond construction -- the men usually with cash, the women sometimes in kind, such as chicken or beer. Both men and women could afford the labour cost. But women did not find time to feed fish or care for the ponds.
Availability of time: Related to labour is the availability of time. Women's participation in pond construction in Musonda Bule was hampered by duties which women had to carry out. Women generally depended for fish farming on the co-operation of men.
Exposure to the benefits of fish farming: Women from Musonda Bule found it easier to adopt fish farming, since they had seen its benefits.
Availability of equipment and fingerlings: Both are necessary as they encourage participation. Musonda Bule had access to equipment, though not too much of it, and fingerlings were available too.
Knowledge: Women derive their knowledge of fish farming from the Department of Fisheries, a project like ALCOM, or whoever promotes fish farming. How these projects convey their information is vital. In Musonda Bule the primary sources of information on fish farming were the Department of Fisheries and ALCOM; in Chibote, it was Fr Angelo. In Musonda Bule, all women except one owned fish ponds, while in Chibote no woman took up fish farming. The vital difference is that in Chibote, fish farming was introduced as an activity for young men, while the Department of Fisheries and ALCOM emphasized that fish farming was appropriate for both men and women.
How does gender impinge on the above factors? Land can be inaccessible to women in some parts of Zambia such as the Southern Province. Land acquisition procedures, coupled with social attitudes towards the role of women, discourage women from taking up projects that require land as an input. But in Musonda Bule, women and men have equal access to acquisition of land.
However, women do not enjoy equal access to labour and time as men do, as mentioned earlier.
Assigning of domestic roles to women in Chibote and Musonda Bule is part of tradition in rural Zambia. Women have little time to spend on a non-farming and non-domestic activity such as fish farming. Chapters 3 and 4 make it clear that fish farming did not replace any activity, only added to existing duties. Further, fish farming had no effect on gender-based division of labour: women's tasks are still being carried out by women.
The labour needed for fish farming by women is a thorny problem. Women are by tradition expected to give high priority to cultivation and household tasks. So their inputs into fish farming can only be minimal. They can hire labour for pond construction; but fish feeding and pond management require fairly continuous inputs. Women depend for these tasks on the husband or children.
What all this boils down to is that unless the entire household -- husband, wife and children -- see fish farming as a priority, the labour problem cannot be satisfactorily attended to.
Knowledge is of course a vital factor: related to it is communication. From the way information relating to fish farming was diffused in Chibote and Musonda Bule, one may conclude that targeted information is essential in community development. A purposefully designed communication process is more effective than informal communication.
Fish farming in Musonda Bule has opened up new opportunities for women. They have a new source of income which they control; they have the power to decide how fish from their ponds will be consumed, how it will be sold, how the proceeds will be used.
To increase production from fish farming, community development agencies must take one of two steps:
increase fish production through the present structure which is male-oriented.
challenge the existing structure which imposes a heavy burden on women, enabling them to spend more time on fish ponds.
