Women comprised of almost half of the fishing communities and their roles have not been fully developed. The traditional gender roles remain intact and those responsible for the development of small scale fishing communities remain gender blind or consider themselves gender neutral. Enhancing women's roles in fishing sector especially in the post harvest or processing will help enhance food security and eventually help eradicate poverty which remain high among fishing sector even in Malaysia.
Focusing the development human resources in the fishing sector will eventually help eradicate poverty and achieve food security. Efforts should be undertaken to integrate gender into the development of small scale fishing sector. Those responsible in the policy and program formulation must be gender sensitize as to enable them to address the gender issues in the sector.
More research on the fishing communities are needed to provide better understanding of the dynamic of the community as input into the evidence based planning.
Jariah Masud