Women have a significant role in the small-scale fisheries. They perform many of the pre-harvesting, and most of the post-harvesting tasks. However, since these tasks fall in the secondary sector from which data is not usually gathered, women’s labour even in the formal economy remains invisible in the statistics. Over the years, however, research on women in the fisheries has revealed the astounding amount of work that women do in the sector and the various forces that shape the conditions under which this work is done. This stands in direct contrast to the official invisibility of women. Most fishers and fish farmers (86 percent) live in Asia, many in China, and also in India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Viet Nam (FAO 2008). The majority are poor, small-scale fishers, and their poverty encompasses more than just income; it includes lack of land ownership, debt, poor access to health, education, and financial capital, and political and geographical marginalization (Béné and Friend, 2009).
