Abstract

Women develop productive and reproductive roles of fundamental importance to sustain the livelihoods of fishing families. These roles can be important to face situations of uncertainty and the crisis for which fisheries has been going through. This paper aims to present the preliminary results of a master research along communities of Patos Lagoon estuary, that has the main goal of understanding which are the roles of women in families and fishing communities of Patos Lagoon estuary and how they contribute to the maintenance of the adaptive capacity face of the current fishing crisis. The methodology used was a gender analysis of secondary data and also from livelihoods interviews with fishermen and fisherwomen in four fishing localities, besides filming and photographs. The preliminary results show that there is a important gender division of work in these fisheries, and the roles of women focus on pre-and post-harvest activities; especially shrimp, crab and fish informal processing. This activity represents an important adaptive strategy for fishing livelihoods. There are gender asymmetries of power, property rights, access to resources and benefits, participation in representation and decision-making spaces. Fisheries management and policies have been shown to be incongruent with the characteristics and specificities of the gender relations in these communities. Gender-focused research has a important contribution to promote co-management processes toward a sustainable, equitable and fair management of natural resources, with fewer inequalities between men and women.

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