Engagement Of Women in Fisheries and Agriculture Sectors: Basis for Empowerment for The Family and Community Development

Abstract

Sustainable agri-fisheries are vital for achieving food security, alleviating poverty, and increasing economic growth, this paper examines the engagement of women in fisheries and agriculture sectors as the basis for empowerment for the family and community development using a descriptive design through administering questionnaires to 136 men and 150 women who rely on subsistence fishing and farming which most of them engaged around 10 to 19 years, ranging from 1 to 50 years to survive in a daily basis voluntarily participated in the study. The perceived level of satisfaction got a mean rating of 2.67 and was described as neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. The t-value is -0.01425, and the value of p is .988641. The result is not significant at p < .05. The perceived difficulties demonstrated significant differences except on the indicator “lack of transport facilities” which is not significant. On the other hand, the indicators for complications showed no significant results, except on the indicators of occupational status, quality time for the family, and prices of hog feed/fish feeds which showed significant differences, and for the capabilities, all indicators got no significant differences using unpaired t-test tool at 0.05 level. Finally, the contribution of women in agriculture and fisheries sectors was great but they are still marginalized especially on the difficulties that they have experienced in their engagement as well as on certain indicators of complications although there was equality on the capability indicators in consideration to the application of the identified strategies in promoting equality.