First UNU-GEST collaboration with Our World web Magazine by United Nations University
The Our World web magazine shares expert views, research and commentary on contemporary affairs of relevance to the mandate of the United Nations. This award-winning web magazine, brought to you by the United Nations University (UNU), exchanges these insights through video briefs, articles, debates, photo essays and public events.
In their issue for April 2017, Our World Magazine has featured Pétur Waldorff's article ¨Left Out to Dry? Gender and Fisheries on Lake Tanganyika¨, where he reflects on his research on a Gendered Value Chain Analysis on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, a region marked by extreme poverty yet blessed by vast resources of fish.
While men dominate the work of fishing on Lake Tanganyika, women take the lead in drying, smoking, and selling fish. Photo: Pétur Waldorff / UNU-GEST
This is a result of a research partnership between the UNU Gender Equality Studies and Training (UNU-GEST) Programme and the UNU Fisheries Training Programme (UNU-FTP) in Iceland. It is the first research project in a series of gender-focused value chain analyses: our latest foray into the complex world of gender, fishing, and development.
The research uses an applied gender focused socio-economic research methodology which is under development at UNU-GEST. It maps the value chain, socio-economic processes, and gendered power dynamics, focusing on people’s livelihoods. It has proven to be a time efficient, reliable and focused research method, specifically valuable for development actors who can use the data generated to make informed decisions and measure and evaluate the effects of their development interventions by comparing their development outcomes to the gendered value chain analysis baseline data. An academic paper is under way focusing on this methodology as an applied development oriented research method, its flexibility and diverse potentials.
The research is led by Dr. Pétur Waldorff, senior researcher at UNU-GEST and the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI).
Research assistant in the field: Upendo Hamidu, from the Tanzanian Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries
See the full article in the Our World Magazine here: https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/gender-and-fisheries-on-lake-tanganyika
