Cape Verde learned from the Claridosos that writing is more than just language—it is a tool for emancipation and collective construction. Today, fifty years after independence and as the country reaches middle-income status, a new phase of nation-building is needed: fairer, more attentive to persistent inequalities, and better prepared for global challenges. Climate change is already affecting the daily lives of coastal communities, the sustainability of fisheries, and food security. In this context, talking about gender is not about fragmenting issues or following discursive trends. It is, above all, about recognizing structural inequalities that continue to silence knowledge, limit access, and restrict the full participation of different groups in managing common goods. Women and men experience and respond differently to the impacts of climate change, and acknowledging this is the foundation for more effective, fair, and sustainable climate action. Incorporating a gender perspective is no longer merely a political choice—it is now a technical, ethical, and social imperative, reflected in commitments made both nationally and internationally. Like the silent figures in Dina Salústio’s work, who cross the world without being fully acknowledged, many women in the fisheries sector hold deep knowledge of the sea but remain on the margins of the decisions that shape their future.
A necessary transition
At the time of independence, Cape Verdean women were already actively participating in resistance and reconstruction efforts—often outside official narratives, yet at the heart of concrete action. Like those who, during the liberation struggle, carried weapons, set up improvised schools, and sustained support networks.
In the fisheries sector today, there is a pressing need to look closely at women’s roles. Despite facing numerous obstacles—from excessive workloads to policies insensitive to local realities—they have shown resilience and creativity in claiming their space.
Although fishing represents only about 2% of national production, it is a strategic sector for Cape Verde, essential for food security and for generating employment in coastal areas, where it accounts for over 80% of the local economy. Roles in the sector are typically divided: men focus mainly on fishing itself, while women handle processing, distribution, and trade.
The sector now faces interconnected challenges: climate change, declining marine resources, economic pressures, and institutional limitations. These call for new models of management—more participatory and integrated—bringing together the state, communities, civil society, academia, and science. These challenges affect men and women differently, exposing long-standing inequalities, especially in access to resources, training, representation, and decision-making power.
Even under these constraints, women remain firmly present in various areas of fisheries-related work, though often invisibly. Through quiet but consistent practices, they demonstrate that social and environmental justice requires persistence, organization, and constant adaptation.
Their action now goes beyond domestic or informal resistance. It appears in public policy-making, co-management processes, knowledge production, community associations, and entrepreneurship. These concrete actions help transform the sector and reinforce the sustainability of the national economy.
In a more literary sense, recalling Orlanda Amarílis—a pioneer who broke the homogeneity of Cape Verdean literature—reminds us that women have long borne the weight of an unacknowledged world on their bare shoulders. Today, proud descendants make their voices heard through spatial planning documents, gender strategies, participatory diagnostics, and active roles in decision-making structures. Women are now leading inspections, sitting on administrative boards and university rectorates, coordinating national strategies across islands, generations, and professional paths—finally gaining recognition for their contributions and their right to shape new narratives. Yet this public visibility often coexists with persistent domestic responsibilities. The work does not end with the office day; it continues at home, caring for children and elderly relatives. In Cape Verde, where female-headed single-parent households are prevalent, balancing professional and personal spheres remains particularly demanding.
Despite progress, asymmetries persist: many decision-making spaces still operate under logics and formats that overlook diverse experiences and profiles. These are historical inheritances that are only gradually being revised in a transforming society.
Where do we go from here?
Building climate resilience is like composing a collective poem: it requires listening to multiple voices and weaving together ecological, social, economic, and cultural rhythms that shape the fisheries sector. Climate change impacts this activity in complex, multifaceted ways—from reduced fish stocks to heightened vulnerabilities in communities relying on fishing for survival, particularly women. Changes in water temperature and salinity, coupled with extreme weather events like storms, prolonged droughts, and coastal erosion, threaten artisanal fishing productivity and worsen associated socio-economic risks.
Between 2010 and 2020, Cape Verde recorded an average rise of 0.8°C in sea surface temperature. In 2023, the temperature reached a record 23.08°C, up from 22.68°C in 2022, and well above the long-term average of 22.32°C recorded since 1901. These rising temperatures, tied to broader climate variability, directly threaten marine ecosystems, species reproduction, and consequently, food security in coastal populations.
The latest IPCC Synthesis Report (2023) highlights that coastal communities—especially in island states like Cape Verde—are among the most vulnerable and exposed to the accelerating impacts of the climate crisis. In the archipelago, worrying phenomena are already evident: ocean warming, stronger extreme weather events, acidification, and degradation of marine ecosystems. Traditionally abundant species such as grouper and mackerel face combined pressures from overfishing and altered reproductive cycles caused by shifting hydrodynamic patterns. Grouper populations, for instance, have declined both in size and number, directly affecting artisanal fishing families’ livelihoods. According to the National Statistics Institute (INE, 2023), total fish catches dropped significantly in 2020/2021, with artisanal and semi-industrial fishing down by 37.6% compared to the previous period. At the same time, catches increasingly include undersized fish, and biomass levels of valuable demersal species have decreased. Rebuilding fish stocks, as recommended by the IPCC, is not just an ecological necessity—it is a practical climate adaptation strategy directly tied to food security, ocean health, and the socio-economic stability of fishing communities.
Integrating gender-sensitive environmental justice in this context is essential to ensure that solutions—such as fishery management, coastal habitat protection, and community co-management of resources—are both fair and effective. Cape Verdean women play a strategic role in small-scale fisheries, processing, and marketing but still face structural barriers to participating fully in decision-making. As the IPCC notes, strengthening local resilience requires valuing traditional knowledge and empowering communities. This means creating inclusive governance spaces, redistributing production resources, and ensuring fair access to climate financing. In Cape Verde, this could translate into supporting women’s cooperatives, recognizing their often-invisible contribution to the fishery value chain, and empowering them to lead coastal ecosystem restoration efforts, such as seagrass bed rehabilitation, which serves as natural protection against climate impacts and stores vital blue carbon.
One step at a time
The 2022–2026 Gender Strategy for the Fisheries Sector, developed by the Ministry of the Sea in partnership with the FAO, marks a key step toward more inclusive and sustainable policies. It acknowledges existing imbalances and proposes concrete measures to overcome them: strengthening technical and organizational capacities of women and youth, valuing local and intergenerational knowledge, systematically producing sex-disaggregated data, and promoting decent work with broader social protection coverage. The strategy also emphasizes mainstreaming gender throughout fishery management and co-management processes.
Although women make up about 70% of the post-harvest workforce, they remain underrepresented in decision-making spaces and face barriers to financing, training, and social rights. The strategy suggests paths to change this reality: creating gender equality plans within fishing companies (such as those developed by ICIEG under the Coastal Fisheries Initiative), elevating processing and marketing as strategic activities, and ensuring women’s effective, equal participation in associations and the National Fisheries Council.
For a fair and effective climate transition in fisheries, all legal instruments and public programs related to the sea must be reviewed through a gender lens. This means adding explicit equity clauses to decrees and management plans, and establishing trained gender focal points in ministries and agencies overseeing the sector. Recognizing women’s structural role and ensuring their active, informed participation in decision-making is essential to strengthen coastal community resilience and build a fairer future for Cape Verdean fisheries.
The power of cooperation and women’s networks
Building gender-responsive climate resilience requires weaving networks—human, institutional, and territorial. The creation of women’s fisheries networks has been one of the most vibrant and effective responses to this challenge.
Projects like “Amdjer de Txeu Luta” work directly with women fishers and fish vendors to foster economic autonomy, climate training, and territorial justice. Through participatory methodologies and local partnerships, the project has helped reduce specific vulnerabilities and strengthened community capacity to adapt to environmental changes.
The MariGual Network, born in São Vicente, is a living example of this transformation. Created to give voice, visibility, and power to women of the sea, it has inspired similar initiatives in other islands like Santiago and Maio. These spaces are more than organizational structures—they are platforms for expression, mutual listening, advocacy, and collective reconstruction. From poetry and music to training in fish preservation techniques and entrepreneurship, these initiatives help women add value to their products and gain financial independence.
Women’s networks can play a key role in participatory governance. Examples include RAMAO, the Fish Vendors Association of Mindelo and Rincão. Strengthening such networks as part of a territorial resilience approach is crucial. These associations transform collective female organization, enhance climate literacy, promote locally based adaptation solutions, and increase women’s access to technical training, entrepreneurship, and ecosystem restoration initiatives. Another example is the Eco-Feminism Movement of Cape Verde, founded in 2019 in Praia, by women fighting for social and climate justice.
Across the country, women’s networks have driven initiatives in climate literacy, capacity building, strategy shifts, knowledge exchange, and added value for marine products, showing that shared knowledge is also a tool for adaptation and resilience. The Lantuna project, for instance, offered pigs to women as an alternative to sand extraction, reducing environmental pressure while providing alternative income sources.
Other projects, supported by GEF, FAO, the European Union, and national partners, aim to integrate gender dimensions into fishery co-management, marine conservation, and sustainable value chain development strategies.
Yet challenges remain in access to financing, information, and institutional representation. Strengthening cooperation between institutions, communities, and local networks is vital to move forward.
A beginning… or a clear-eyed continuation
To advance, it is essential to ensure equal access to decision-making spaces, technical training, financing, and adapted technologies, while also strengthening inter-island and intergenerational support networks. Producing gender-disaggregated data will help monitor these transformations.
Just as marine ecosystems are connected by currents that transcend borders, building climate resilience requires an integrated approach that acknowledges social and institutional linkages. Strengthening inclusion leads to fairer, more effective policies—turning social justice into tangible action.