The journal Development is committed to‘the search for alternative paths of social transformation towards a more sustainable and just world’. As you read the articles on gender and fisheries papers, you will find a natural fit with this commitment. Fisheries face daunting ecological sustainability challenges, produce profits from the booming global trade in fish products and yet give livelihoods to millions of poor fishworkers and their communities. The sector is erroneously perceived to be a‘male only’domain, apparently offering little opportunity to women. The articles, which consider complete fish supply chains, show that women’s and sometimes youth contributions are substantial but largely invisible and could be greatly enhanced with suitable assistance.‘Development’ fits in also because developing countries dominate world fish production from natural fish stocks and aquaculture, but women in developing countries are in the labour intensive, poorest paid and least recognized jobs in the fish supply chain, while the better-off people in developed countries benefit from their production. A ‘just world’ is thus relevant in many dimensions, including gender and in the unequal competition between large scale and small-scale enterprises for declining fish stocks and farm spaces. Gender and fisheries studies are overdue for development attention and yet the road to this special focus in Development has been too short. As a reader of Development, accustomed to rich discussions, abundant data and well-developed frameworks for examining development issues, you may find our papers preliminary and tentative. Nevertheless, this selection of research reports, largely from papers presented at the November 2007 Asian Fisheries Society 2nd Global Symposium on Gender and Fisheries, seeks to create a solid basis for understanding gender and gender differentiated roles and development needs in fisheries and aquaculture, and for providing improved, just and gender sensitive development policy and practice. Fisheries and aquaculture are usually overlooked in global development statements, often notionally lumped together with agriculture and rural development, with which they have commonalities and significant differences. Yet, despite the lack of visibility