Abstract
Over the last decade, Egypt's aquaculture sector has expanded rapidly, which has contributed substantially to per capita fish supply, and the growth of domestic fish markets and employment across the aquaculture value chain. Despite the growing importance of aquaculture sector in Egyptian labour force, only a few studies have explored the livelihoods of Egypt's women and men fish retailers. Even fewer studies have examined gender-based market constraints experienced by these informal fish retailers. This study uses sex-disaggregated data collected in 2013 in three governorates of Lower Egypt to examine the economic and social constraints to scale of enterprises between women (n = 162) and men informal fish retailers (n = 183). Specifically, we employ linear regression method to determine the correlates of enterprise performance. We found that both women and men retailers in the informal fish market earn low profits and face livelihood insecurities. However, women's enterprise performance is significantly lower than that of men even after controlling for individual socio-economic and retailing characteristics. Specifically, the burden of unpaid household work and lack of support therein impedes women's ability to generate higher revenues. These findings strengthen the argument for investing in understanding how gender norms and attitudes affect livelihood options and outcomes. This leads to recommendations on gender-responsive interventions that engage with both men and women and enhance the bargaining power and collective voice of fish retailers.
Highlights
Aquaculture has become the world’s fastest growing food sector in the world [1,2]
By adopting a ‘social relations approach’ [38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45], this study examines the economic significance of gender relations on the trading floor and within the household, which govern how financial resources, labour and market exchange relations, and freedom of mobility are negotiated between women and men
Women fish retailers were randomly sampled through lists developed by the community development authorities involved in implementing the IEIDEAS project with women retailers: men were identified through lists developed in known fish market places
Summary
Aquaculture has become the world’s fastest growing food sector in the world [1,2]. In Egypt, fish farming has expanded rapidly, which has contributed to domestic fish supply more than doubling over the last ten years [3]. This has led to increasing employment in retail markets [4,5,6,7]. According to a recent value chain study by Nasr-Allah et al [8], aquaculture supply. Gender and business development in Egypt’s fish retail markets
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