Invisibly yours Also from Brazil is the report of a six-day workshop on Gender and Coastal Fishing Communities in Latin America , held in the coastal fishing village of Prainha do Canto Verde, Brazil, in June 2000. Thirty-six participants, both men and women, attended the workshop, including representatives of Latin American countries as well as ICSF representatives from India, Belgium and Brazil. During the workshop it was recognised that the pressure on coastal fishing communities and their livelihoods is increasing. Despite cultural differences between regions, and differences between rural and urban areas, the workshop found a common factor regarding the work of women within fishing communities. It has low social value and is normally seen as an extension of the 'domestic' space.
Little value is attached to the domestic and community tasks performed by women.
This is despite the enormous diversity of tasks performed by women. As in the Pacific, women may perform a wide range of fisheries activities including marketing, processing, gleaning, net-mending, seaweed cultivation, fish smoking, drying and salting, and fishing. In addition, they may also take on work on behalf of husbands, such as dealing with financial institutions for credit and repayment of loans. Also, women are typically responsible for the family during absences by their fishermen husbands, and often take on activities outside the fishery to give the family some form of stable income. During the workshop there was consensus that women have always been important in the fisheries and in fishing communities, other issues provoked debates and resulted in the emergence of different positions.