In the Spotlight: Sajeda Yasmin

Sajeda Yasmin is WorldFish's gender specialist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Yasmin's research focuses on gender inclusion in market systems, and she works to design and implement gender-inclusive financial interventions in rural communities. She collaborates on projects that address market system development, food security, gender equity, education and violence against women. Yasmin has also developed the Empowerment, Knowledge and Transformative Action model (EKATA) used to empower women and adolescent girls in Bangladesh. 

What are you currently working on for WorldFish?

I work as the Gender Specialist for WorldFish’s Feed the Future Bangladesh Aquaculture Activity project funded by USAID. In this capacity, I provide technical guidance to the Women in Business Gill Nets project and work to support women’s financial autonomy.

The project is working to engage women in aquaculture and supports women fish farmers, processors and traders through the development of women-only business centers, where they can come together to develop new skills and income opportunities. Due to social norms and a traditionally conservative culture in Bangladesh, rural women often lack access to income-generating activities and financial services. The project delivers training courses on farming nutrient-rich mola fish, harvesting using gill nets and marketing fish to consumers in order to empower women through aquaculture.

My responsibility in the project is to assure that the women entrepreneurs are receiving equitable opportunities to enhance their capacity and to increase their production, customer base and income.

How do gill nets support women’s autonomy?

In Bangladesh, both women and men are actively involved in aquaculture, but women are often relegated to gender-based informal roles like fish processing. Women face barriers that prevent them from farming and catching fish, even from their own homestead ponds.

Gill nets are innovative nets that enable women to enter aquaculture ponds and harvest fish without getting their sarees wet—which then need to be washed and hung out to dry. With gill nets, women can stand on the pond bank to collect fish for family meals and markets without having to worry about the extra burden. Before the gill net technology was introduced, they would often just wait for their husbands to catch the fish for them. Gill nets are one of a number of innovations supported by the Women in Business Centers established by the project.