Replication Data for: Women’s Empowerment in Fisheries Index

Working with fishing communities in Barotse and Lake Chilwa, and other partners, the project will analyze fish value chains, including the differing roles of men and women, to understand how losses occur in fish volume, nutrient content, and economic value. The research team will then develop and pilot interventions to reduce these losses, while also addressing issues connected to gender and power. These interventions will include improved processing methods, such as parboiling, solar drying, and kilning. Gender training and behavior change communication activities will address the gender and social relations in the fisheries value chain. The team will work with policymakers to increase recognition of the importance of fish production and gender equality in national and regional policies. Men and women from the Malawian and Zambian communities will participate in the analysis and in developing innovations. Partnerships between researchers, private sector representatives, local community members, and government staff will help to build strong links with those responsible for fisheries governance in Malawi and Zambia.

In mid-2015, the project modified the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI, Uganda abridged version) to fit the capture fisheries context. The WEAI is a survey-based index that measures the state of empowerment and gender parity in the broad agriculture sector, identifies areas that empowerment-focused interventions could be strengthened, and enables projects to track progress implementing their interventions over time. WEAI measures the roles and extent of women’s engagement in agriculture in five domains: decisions about agricultural production, access to and decision-making power over productive resources, control over use of income, leadership in the community, and time use. It also measures women’s empowerment relative to men’s within their homes (see Alkire et al. 2013 and Sraboni et al. 2014 for more information on the WEAI).

The project’s modification efforts of the WEAI produced the Women’s Empowerment in Fisheries Index (WEFI). Changes made included: 1) exclusion of certain questions and domain sections that were not appropriate given the project focus; 2) alterations to domain sections to shorten the questionnaire and ensure it took under 45 minutes to administer with project participants; and 3) addition of a gender attitudes scale on norms (see Nanda 2011) in part due to the relatively short duration of the project as attitudinal change precedes behavioral change (Underwood 2009). In addition, the project interviewed women and men value chain actors (fishers, processors, and traders) and not their spouses. The project’s original intent behind developing and using the WEFI was to benchmark gendered aspects of the capture fishery value chain, use this information to inform project activities and the design of the GTC tool, and track any changes that occurred over the course of the project by administering the WEFI at endline. The project did not envision using the WEFI to develop a score that gauged women and men value chain actors’ levels of empowerment given the significant changes made to the instrument during the modification process. The WEFI underwent extensive pretesting and refinement before administering it at baseline.
The data collected by the WEFI and used for analysis in this study included those on women’s and men’s involvement in fishing, processing and trading fish and their control over the use of income generated from these activities, their ownership status of key value chain assets, and on gender attitudes. Project participants were asked whether they participated in a particular value chain activity (e.g., fishing) in the past 12 months prior to administering the WEFI and how much input (no input, or low, medium, or high input) they made into decisions on the use of income generated from the activity. In this study, larger input into decisions made on the use of income from fishing or trading fish implies a person is more empowered. Participants were also asked about who in their household owns a certain value chain asset, specifically whether they or their spouse owned it outright or they owned it jointly with their spouse. It is believed that joint ownership of assets rather than sole ownership by an individual or their spouse is a more equitable way of owning assets within the household, especially those that help or are sold to generate larger sums of money. The gender attitudes scale comprised 8 statements that participants were asked to respond to: “agree” = 1, “partially agree” = 2, “disagree” = 3. Responses to the 8 statements were summed with the highest score = 24 (perfect gender equal attitude) and the lowest score = 8 (perfect gender unequal attitude). Statements reflected current gender norms such as “women should not get involved in fishing fulltime, this is a man’s responsibility” and “women should primarily be the ones who clean and process fish” and “men should primarily be the ones who control the earnings obtained from the sale of fish.”
The project first administered the WEFI at baseline in June 2015 to 123 people (91 men, 32 women) from participatory action research groups across all 6 fishing camps who would eventually test the improved technologies. The oversampling of men reflects the project’s initial capacity to adequately engage with people on the fishing camps. The WEFI baseline was administered to an additional 25 women in January 2016 well before any gender-related activities began to achieve a more balanced baseline sample. The WEFI endline was carried out in December 2016 to the same women and men, and due to attrition, only 85 people were interviewed. While the attrition rate was high (42.6%), it is not too surprising given the complexities involved in working and conducting research in small-scale fisheries settings in sub-Saharan Africa (see Witt et al. 2010). Attrition was mainly due to people migrating off the fishing camps to their upland villages given the start of the rainy season and because of some people dropping out of the project for whatever reason. Of the 85 people whose baseline and endline responses were captured by the WEFI, 5 people from the fishing camps where the drama skits were performed did not attend any of the skits. These five individuals (3 women, 2 men) were excluded from analysis to enable a strict comparison between those on camps where only the PGA was carried out (“PGA only”, n = 35) and those who participated in the drama skits (“PGA+GTC”, n = 45). While the sample sizes used for the analysis are rather small, the panel data yielded some interesting results presented in the next section.

本项目与Barotse及Chilwa湖的渔业社区及其他合作伙伴携手，将分析鱼类价值链（fish value chains），包括男性与女性在其中的不同角色，以理解鱼类在数量、营养成分及经济价值方面的损失如何发生。研究团队随后将开发并试点干预措施（interventions）以减少此类损失，同时解决与性别及权力相关的问题。这些干预措施包括改进加工方法，如预煮、太阳能干燥及窑烤。性别培训及行为改变沟通（behavior change communication）活动将应对渔业价值链中的性别与社会关系问题。团队将与政策制定者合作，提升鱼类生产及性别平等在国家及区域政策中的认可度。马拉维及赞比亚社区的男性与女性将参与分析过程及创新方案的开发。研究人员、私营部门代表、当地社区成员与政府工作人员之间的伙伴关系，将助力建立与马拉维及赞比亚渔业治理（fisheries governance）负责人之间的紧密联系。

2015年年中，本项目对农业女性赋权指数（Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, WEAI，乌干达简化版）进行了修改，以适应捕捞渔业场景。WEAI是一项基于调查的指数，用于衡量广义农业领域的赋权（empowerment）状态及性别平等程度，识别可强化赋权导向干预措施的领域，并使项目能够跟踪干预措施实施过程中的进展。WEAI从五个领域衡量女性参与农业的角色及程度：农业生产决策、生产资源的获取与决策权、收入使用控制权、社区领导力及时间利用。它还衡量家庭内部女性相对于男性的赋权水平（更多关于WEAI的信息参见Alkire等2013及Sraboni等2014）。

项目对WEAI的修改工作形成了渔业女性赋权指数（Women’s Empowerment in Fisheries Index, WEFI）。修改内容包括：1）剔除与项目重点不符的特定问题及领域部分；2）调整领域部分以缩短问卷，确保与项目参与者的访谈时间控制在45分钟以内；3）添加基于规范的性别态度量表（gender attitudes scale）（参见Nanda 2011），部分原因在于项目持续时间相对较短，而态度改变先于行为改变（Underwood 2009）。此外，项目访谈的是价值链参与者（渔民、加工者及贸易商）而非其配偶。项目开发并使用WEFI的初衷是为捕捞渔业价值链的性别维度建立基准，利用这些信息指导项目活动及GTC工具的设计，并通过终线（endline）调查WEFI来跟踪项目期间发生的任何变化。由于修改过程中对工具进行了重大调整，项目并未计划使用WEFI生成衡量男女价值链参与者赋权水平的分数。WEFI在基线（baseline）调查前经过了广泛的预测试及完善。

WEFI收集并用于本研究分析的数据包括：男性与女性参与捕鱼、加工及贸易鱼类的情况，他们对这些活动产生的收入使用的控制权，关键价值链资产（value chain assets）的所有权状态，以及性别态度。参与者被问及在WEFI调查前的12个月内是否参与过特定价值链活动（如捕鱼），以及他们对该活动收入使用决策的投入程度（无投入、低投入、中等投入或高投入）。在本研究中，对捕鱼或鱼类贸易收入使用决策的投入程度越高，意味着该个体的赋权（empowerment）程度越高。参与者还被问及家庭中谁拥有某一特定价值链资产，特别是该资产是由其本人或配偶单独拥有，还是由双方共同拥有。研究认为，资产的共同所有（joint ownership）相较于个人或配偶单独所有（sole ownership），是家庭内部更公平的资产拥有方式，尤其是对于那些有助于产生或通过出售可获得大额资金的资产而言。性别态度量表（gender attitudes scale）包含8个陈述，参与者需做出回应："同意"计1分，"部分同意"计2分，"不同意"计3分。8个陈述的得分总和最高为24分（代表完全性别平等的态度），最低为8分（代表完全性别不平等的态度）。这些陈述反映了当前的性别规范（gender norms），例如"女性不应全职从事捕鱼工作，这是男性的责任""女性应主要负责鱼类的清洁及加工工作"以及"男性应主要控制出售鱼类所获得的收入"。

项目于2015年6月首次在基线（baseline）调查中使用WEFI，调查对象为来自所有6个渔营的参与式行动研究组（participatory action research groups）的123人（91名男性、32名女性），这些人最终将测试改进后的技术。男性样本过多反映了项目初期与渔营人群充分接触的能力限制。为获得更平衡的基线样本，项目于2016年1月在任何性别相关活动开始前额外对25名女性进行了WEFI基线调查。WEFI终线（endline）调查于2016年12月对同一批男性及女性进行，但由于样本流失，仅对85人进行了访谈。尽管流失率较高（42.6%），但考虑到在撒哈拉以南非洲小规模渔业环境中开展工作及研究的复杂性，这一结果并不意外（参见Witt等2010）。样本流失主要是因为雨季开始后人们从渔营迁移到高地村庄，以及部分人因各种原因退出项目。在WEFI捕获了基线及终线数据的85人中，有5人（3名女性、2名男性）来自开展戏剧小品活动的渔营，但未参加任何小品活动。这5人被排除在分析之外，以便严格比较仅实施PGA的渔营人群（"PGA only"，n=35）与参与戏剧小品活动的人群（"PGA+GTC"，n=45）。虽然用于分析的样本量相对较小，但面板数据（panel data）仍得出了一些有趣的结果，将在下一节呈现。