GENDER EQUALITY AND EQUITY IN THE MALDIVES

Gender equality and equity in the Maldives. How IPNLF Maldives helps women fish processors turn fish into money.

In the Maldives, traditional one-by-one tuna fishing is largely considered a male-dominated industry, but “women are the ones that turn the fish into money”. Despite their significant contributions to household income and the fisheries sector, women fisherfolk face several challenges in expanding their small-scale businesses and reaping the maximum economic benefits. They often struggle with poor access to market information and credit, delayed and unfair payment conditions, unreliable buyers and middlemen, and limited financial assistance and training.

By using financial technology (FinTech), IPNLF Maldives, the local branch organisation of the International Pole and Line Foundation (IPNLF), came up with a game-changing solution in its project on Increasing Economic Benefits to Women Fish Processors to develop an exclusive e-market platform to socio-economically uplift women in Gemanafushi, the largest fishing island of the nation.

IPNLF Maldives now works with software developers, local women fisherfolk and key stakeholders to develop a digital trading application and are providing a series of trainings to improve business management, financial and digital literacy, and marketing skills for these women through capacity-building programmes. This new approach by IPNLF Maldives to combine large-scale collaboration and technical innovation is a first for the country.

Recently, IPNLF Maldives published its first findings in the “BASELINE SURVEY REPORT: Increasing Economic Benefit to Women Fish Processors in the Maldives,” which outlines the current context and obstacles that women fish processors in the Maldives are experiencing and identifies solutions to be implemented in order to support these women. The study also provided information to establish the baseline for outcome indicators for IPNLF’s project.

With this innovation, IPNLF Maldives is supporting local fish processing women to sustain and expand their small-scale business operations and improve their income from fisheries activities, without interference from unreliable buyers or unfair market conditions imposed by middlemen.

This innovation has been selected by UNDP’s Ocean Innovation Challenge (OIC) out of 300 proposals received to tap into new technologies and approaches to end overfishing and put an end to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices. These innovations promote sustainable fisheries and the Blue Economy to bring economic benefits to Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDC) by increasing the access of small-scale fishers to technical and financial resources, thereby contributing to Sustainable Development Goal 14.

This IPNLF Maldives innovation will give women fisherfolk direct marketing and branding control over their fish products, augment their commercial value, and promote the empowerment of women through technology. The FinTech solution will provide direct access to the market and give women bargaining power to increase the economic benefits from their activities in the pre-harvesting, harvesting, and post-harvesting activities.

Accessible on mobile, the platform will support transparency and traceability, an important precursor of sustainability in the fisheries sector in the tuna fisheries’ value chain, and will give consumers access to product information, — the woman who processed it, the island it originated on, and potentially even the vessel and type of fishing gear that was used to catch the fish.