Gender differences in fish processors' willingness to pay for a group-owned fish solar tent dryer (FSTD) are being assessed by using the double hurdle model. Willingness to pay (WTP) responses from 382 randomly selected fish processors were elicited through a bidding game in a contingent valuation method. The findings show that the average probability that fish processors will be willing to pay was 74% (76% for females and 72% for males). Furthermore, the average level of WTP was US$29.45 (US$26.46 for females and US$33.51 for males). Females have a lower level of WTP than men because of their low endowment with assets that can assist them such as education, access to markets and productive assets. In view of these findings, the paper concludes that female fish processors have a higher probability of being willing to pay than male fish processors, but the levels of WTP are lower for female processors. The study suggests that when organising the community into cooperatives is possible, WTP for capital-intensive technologies can be assessed as contributions of individuals to the total cost of the technologies although the common property characteristic is suspected to lower the level of willingness to pay.

Ecosystem services and their role in alleviating poverty are centered on a set of gendered social relations. The understanding of these relations between men and women in aquatic ecosystems can unveil gender-based opportunities and constraints along the value chains of the ecosystem services. A gender discourse perspective on participation of actors of an ecosystem can further facilitate the understanding of the complex and subtle ways in which gender is represented, constructed, and contested. This paper analyses the barriers to the participation of women in the fishing industry. The analysis is based on a study conducted in five fishing villages of Lake Malawi through a structured questionnaire, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and observations. First, it looks at gender and participation from a theoretical perspective to explain how gender manifests itself in participation and interrogates why women have limited benefits from the fishing industry. Second, it highlights the barriers that seem to preclude women from participating, which include institutional embedded norms, financial, socio-cultural, and reproduction roles. In general, women had little influence on the type of fishing sites, markets, and access to financing of their businesses. A gender transformative agenda is therefore required to proactively facilitate changes of some entrenched institutional norms as well as having greater access to financial services and new technologies in order to enhance women’s full participation and equal benefits from ecosystem services.

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