Women’s role in fisherfolks’ communities of Hooghly estuary.

Abstract

Women in fisherfolks’ community of Hooghly Estuary engage themselves in a wide range of activities in the fisheries and in others related works to assess the role of women in fisheries in Hooghly Estuary, four important fishlanding sites in Hooghly estuary were selected purposively. Four hundred fisher women selected at random were interviewed personally with a semi-structured schedule developed for this purpose. The study, found that in upper stretch of Hooghly estuary the participation of women in inland fisheries activity was lower than the lower stretch. It was revealed from the study that overall 62 per cent women had medium level of participation in various fisheries and income generating activities. The study further showed that the average family size of the was 6. It was also found that 38% of the fisherwomen were illiterate group and only 12% of them reached upto secondary level. Most of the fisher women perceived (81%) that lack of credit facilities from the Banks, cooperatives etc was the major constraint faced by them. Moreover, in most of the cases fisher women were not aware about any type of facilities offered by the State as well as Central Governments. The fisher women in most of the cases (77%) we are not able to join various extension programmes and trainings due to low literacy and poor exposure, lack of timely information about training and lack of decision making behaviour. Formation of Self Help Groups, Mahila Mandal need to be encouraged to empower the women fishers, so that their participation in various alternative livelihood practices can be increased .