This research will look at three different essays which seek to quantify the significant roles women play in fisheries management in coastal Ghana specifically fishing communities in Central and Western regions. The first essay will look at fish price determination by women in Ghana. This idea is borne out of the pricing of productive resource under supply uncertainty. The prices are determined with limited information on daily catch at landing sites. Due to uncertainty in supply, expectations will be formed around the total catch of the day. Expectation models will therefore be developed to analyse how such prices are arrived at by the Fish Queen and OLS regression used to empirically analyse the price equations. Errors in fish pricing may have implications for postharvest losses, landing, and the overall capture fish resource management. The second and third essays will investigate the effect of women’s participation in fisheries on food security and child dietary diversity. Efforts to measure the participation of women in fisheries have relied on the Empowerment index. Although this measurement has been widely used, it ignores the gender parity in the household. Thus, this study seeks to adopt Women Empowerment in Agricultural Index to investigate the linkages between women’s empowerment, food security and child dietary diversity. To measure women’s participation in fisheries, the research will modify the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index to fit the capture fisheries context. The binary probit model will be used to estimate the effect of women empowerment on food securities in coastal communities. With regards to child dietary diversity, the multinomial logit will be adopted. The empowerment bit will emphasize the need to achieve the sustainable development goal 5 because empowering women will help secure their human rights and help drive the pro poor growth agenda. The empowerment of women in fishing communities is very crucial in ending poverty, hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable fisheries, and ultimately achieve gender equality.
Africa Centre of Excellence in Coastal Resilience | 
University of Cape Coast
