The need to integrate women into rural development activity has recently received more and more attention in countries bordering the Bay of Bengal. National machinery has been developed for the purpose in a few countries. But actual policy implementation has been dogged by deep-rooted social and cultural attitudes, by illiteracy, by lack of opportunities for study and jobs. Result: rural women continue to be a disadvantaged group as compared to men. Their economic worth has gone unrecognized. Measures to better their lot are far too few. At the meeting on the training of women extension workers, participants felt that the past neglect of women in the matter of jobs, education and access to rural services should be righted. As for fishing activities, women are well known to play a substantial role in a wide variety of activities in the Bay of Bengal region. Yet specific data is lacking. There are hardly any technical support schemes to benefit women in small-scale fisheries. Women fisheries officers are few in number and none of them performs functions specifically related to women in fishing communities. There is potential for better participation by women in every aspect of aquaculture. Since the 1970s, small-scale fisheries have had an important place in fisheries social science and in fisheries management. While there has been substantial discussion of what constitutes the category of small-scale fisheries, its considerable ambiguity is nevertheless often passed over. This paper argues that while the category of scale fisheries can be best understood in terms of scale, the underlying reason for the power of the category lies in the values of social justice and ecological sustainability that it has come to represent in response to dominant high modern narratives of change. Fisheries governance may better be served by prioritising these values rather than by making a fetish out of small-scale fisheries. Family incomes can be increased by this activity; it has the great advantage of not requiring prolonged absence from household work; it can be combined with other occupations like poultry farming, duck and pig rearing.