The Unpronounced Support: Wives’ Engagement in Sustaining Fishers’ Households Enterprises in the Fishery Challenging Space in Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania

Abstract

In contrast to convenient and easily accessible productive domains such as agriculture, where women’s participation is deemed indispensable and visible, their engagement in households’ fishing enterprises has been grossly undervalued. However, the 2021 Kilwa Kisiwani study found that fishermen’s wives were vital to their families’ fishing businesses in the face of declining fish stocks and government moratoriums. This cross-sectional study that involved 221 respondents targeted fishing-dependent households where both husbands and wives were involved, with the latter making a substantial amount. Data gathering, analysis, interpretation and discussion employed qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings indicate that most households’ fishing enterprises survived because spouses provided labour, worked outside the home or supported the enterprise from home. The paper cautions against the notion that male dominance invariably determines the socioeconomic trajectory of households while women are relegated to subordinate roles. This perspective is deemed an oversimplification and a distortion of reality.