Empowering women to change fate of fisherfolk

In the thickly populated coastal villages including Ibrahim Hyderi and Rerhi, most of the residents are living below the poverty lines and deprived of basic human needs such as drinking water, quality education and primary health.
Most of them are traditional fisherfolk, but as the fish catch has reduced due to various factors including environmental degradation, their lives have become worse.
Therefore, it was necessary to provide them with technical skill development trainings to enable them to survive in these hard times.
The Trust for Conservation of Coastal Resources (TCCR), an organisation working on coastal communities came forward with “Promoting Gender Equality for Decent Employment (GE4DE)” – a project in started collaboration with International Labour Organisation (ILO) – to train fisherfolk, mostly, women, to pack fish for export.
The forefathers of young Naziran Faqeer Muhammad, a traditional fisherwoman and resident of a city’s historical fishermen settlement, had no idea until two months ago that women can get trained and contribute towards meeting her family’s expenses.
The majority of the population in her settlement is directly and indirectly associated with the fishing trade. Both men and women are involved in various activities related to fishing. From net-making to shrimp-peeling, women have played a vital role in this industry. Historically fishing has been a source of subsistence living for the coastal communities. However with the onset of the market economy, fishing was also converted from subsistence-living to a profit-making industry. 
“I work in this project as a supervisor and happy to see that such a large number of women are getting skill development training,” Naziran told Pakistan Today. “Now they can get a job easily in fish processing factories.”
TCCR Executive Director, Zubeda Birwani, who herself is a traditional fisherwoman, said that new technology and market forces have completely changed the dynamics of the fishing sector.
“This project will help the fishing community’s men and women to acquire skills for their employment in the fishing industry,” she added.
Giving details about the project, she said that 30 women and 20 men will be trained through the project. The trainees were selected from poor households of the fishing communities. Willingness to receive training and work in the fishing industry would be the key prerequisite. Preference was given to low-income households preferably led by women. Project duration is of four months. It included six weeks on-job training. Each day trainees attended at least six hours training. Classroom activities were approximately 30 percent time of the total training duration. All training activities were undertaken at the work place.
“Both men and women from the fishing community will get six weeks training in the fish processing industry and will be linked with potential employers to secure jobs after completion of the training,” said Birwani.
 The project area is an extremely old village among the fishing community.  In 2008, the TCCR team conducted a consultation with fisherwomen and found that with the changing trends in the fishing sector, market forces have gradually taken over the business. New technology, gadgets and market forces have changed the dynamics of the fishing sector. In this environment the fishing community has not only lost its subsistence fishing but many of them have lost employment and earning since their skills were rendered obsolete and irrelevant to market needs. Women were mostly involved in manual labour and were extending a supportive role to their families’ livelihood. The women were the first to lose their income sources. Cotton nets were replaced with new nylon nets, which required little repair but are more harmful to fish stock. The fishing industry introduced modern factories where fish grading, processing and packaging is being done on a scientific basis. It requires special skills that fishing women are not familiar with. Hence, women of fishing community have lost their sources of earning. It has resulted in extreme poverty and worst social disempowerment for fishing community in general and women in particular. There is a dire need to provide women with modern skills so that they may become skilled to get jobs in factories and thereby become socially more empowered through contributing to family income. 
The women of the fishing community play a significant role in the household expenditure. In the last few decades the entire fishing sector has changed, women have been displaced and .have lost their economic opportunities from within the fishing sector. This situation has had an impact on women’s livelihood. During the selection for the training, TCCR identified 30 women for the GE4DE project. All these women have actively participated in the training but the extra efforts of three women Sabahat, Asma and Naziran fetched them a good position in the factory and they became supervisors for the training. This was their first experience of working outside their homes and these women have received a good response and are confident about their future work.