The commercial fishermen of Belize are legend and legion. They haul the most prized catch and bring it to our markets or our favourite eateries. But that's only half the story; fishermen aren't the only ones bringing in the meat. Fisherwomen are too. Lately, many women have taken up the profession to provide for their families. As part of Fisherfolk month, the women took place in the second annual Women in Fisheries Forum today at the Biltmore. We stopped by and found out more about this year's forum.
Ronda Lewis, WCS Assistant Country Director
"This year we are taking it a little bit further and looking at how we can mainstream gender in the fisheries sector. We are still looking back at that gender action plan and some of the key areas that we identified such as research, communications and so on so today one of the main things we are doing is highlighting in the small-scale fisheries guidelines which looks at securing sustainable small-scale fisheries in the context of food security and poverty eradication."
"The focus for today is primarily women looking at how women, for example, can become empowered in this sector, can have access to information regarding this sector, can look at some of the leadership roles and see how they can become suited to take up some of those responsibilities in the fisheries sector so the focus today is primarily women often times when we think about the fisheries sector we only think about the act of fishing and as a result of that we focus a lot on the men, which is important as well because we want to highlight the key role that men play in this sector but we also want to look at the role of women in terms of that entire value chain. The role that they are playing and highlight the importance of that role."
Sahar Vasquez
"Tell us a little bit about being in the fishing industry where we don't really hear the word fisherwoman we mainly hear fisherman."
Jenna Ferguson, Fisherwoman
"Well, it is very exciting to me. I know that there is only a small margin of fishing women out there and they have not been highlighted this is a day where we can be highlighted as women because we play a very important role that we do all the work just like the men but still have to take care of the household so we do a play a very important role when it comes to the backbone of the fishing, when it comes to hooking lobster, catching the conchs, cleaning the conchs. We even scrape the fish and sell it so we do all the things the man foes so we do play a very important role."
A total of 50 women in the fishing industry attended the forum.
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