A national workshop was organised to mainstream gender into the fisheries policies and legislation in India, to implement the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines). The workshop was organised by International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) supported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and was held in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, from 18 to 20 August, 2019. Key women CSO/NGO fishery stakeholders from the states of Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal attended the Workshop. The key objectives of the workshop were to: (a) Enhance the capacities of women fishworkers to mainstream gender into fisheries policy and legislation; (b) Conduct a gender analysis of fisheries budget allocations and schemes and the socio-economic indicators of fishing communities; (c) Recommend action points for the implementation of NPMF 2017 and Draft NIFAP 2018, from a gender perspective and (d) Facilitate exchange of knowledge between diverse women fishworker representatives and develop a national platform for women in fisheries.
This workshop was a follow-up of the 2016 workshop on Women in Fisheries to develop a national platform for women in fisheries arising from a need that was felt to address women’s requirements for social development of women in the fisheries sector. The participants were restricted to four states that had a big spread of women’s work.
