This working document highlights the crucial and urgent need to address gender inequalities and support women’s empowerment in aquaculture to strengthen the sector’s contribution to all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and SDG5 in particular, making sure to leave no one behind. It outlines the challenges that prevent women’s equal engagement and their empowerment in the sector, starting from the lack of gender statistics, including sex-disaggregated data, to produce the evidence base for gender-responsive policy-making and investment in aquaculture. The diversity of the aquaculture sector, coupled with the complexity of gender and other intersecting issues, are not well understood and need to be further analysed. The document suggests recommended activities, interventions, strategies and partnerships with international, regional and non-governmental organizations to address gender inequality in aquaculture, taking into account the contribution that the aquaculture sector can provide to achieving SDG5 and vice versa; and the potential of newly developed tools and promising approaches, such as Gender Transformative Approaches (GTAs) to help achieve equal relations and opportunities for women and men in aquaculture development and value chains, by tackling the structural barriers to gender equality and women’s empowerment.
