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FAO is committed to integrate and enhance the role of women in fisheries and aquaculture development. However, field experience indicates that the development of operational strategies has been difficult. In recognition of this limited success and with the aim of identifying operational strategies for the full integration of gender issues in fisheries and aquaculture development/ FAO/SIDA Aquaculture for Local Community Development Programme (ALCOM), in collaboration with the FAO Policy and Planning Division and the Core Group on Women in Fisheries, hosted a regional workshop on Enhanced Women's Participation in Fisheries Development during 4–7 December 1990 at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. FAO project position papers and case studies on the integration of women in fisheries and aquaculture were presented.

This report elaborates on the discussions of the workshop by describing the issues considered critical to the integration of gender concerns in development activities. Components of overall operational strategies to address these issues are also discussed. The report is also intended to serve as a basis for future seminars on gender issues in fisheries and aquaculture by providing material for discussion, corroboration or refutal.

Based on project experience, one of the main conclusions of the workshop was that strategies to enhance the role of women in fisheries and aquaculture development had to be addressed within the broader issues of gender.

Integrating gender issues into mainstream development activities implies addressing both practical and strategic gender needs. Practical gender needs relate to addressing the existing roles of men and women (eg. the introduction of labour-saving technologies) and addressing strategic gender needs relate to changing their roles in society (eg. improving educational opportunities). Activities should therefore focus on the community as a whole, with equal importance accorded to addressing the different needs of men and women.

The workshop also concluded that activities to enhance the role of women fail when they are considered as an homogenous group. Like any other broad target group, women are socio-economically differentiated and face different constraints regarding access to and control over resources. Furthermore, men can also face the same constraints as women.

Failure to fully integrate gender issues at all stages of the project cycle from identification through to evaluation has been caused by a number of reasons. These include a lack of gender-disaggregated socio-economic information, poor and inflexible project design, and limited training on gender issues given to project and extension staff. Addressing these issues is the responsibility of the agents of the institutional framework of the project cycle: FAO Fisheries Department, FAO member governments and donors.

Gender issues specific to fisheries or aquaculture development relate to the access to and control over, resources. For fisheries, the critical issues generally relate to enhancing women's roles in development activities. For aquaculture, the critical issues relate to the participation of women in an activity which has been predominantly targeted at men. -

The critical issues are complemented with strategy components intended to contribute to the development of an overall strategy to address these issues. Further documentation of experience and testing of approaches still needs to be carried out, before an overall operational strategy can be developed.

The report concludes with five areas for immediate follow-up action for FAO Fisheries Department, Regional Offices and global, regional or national programmes. These areas of action focus on improving information bases, strengthening support to all stages of the project cycle, research and development of operational methods to integrate gender issues, strengthening institutional capabilities and integrating gender issues in planning process.