Lower educational qualifications and socio-cultural constraints hamper full participation of women in development activities in the sector. In South Asia, for instance, female literacy rates are only around 50% compared to their male counterparts. With better opportunities in secondary and tertiary education, more women have enrolled in training and research institutions. This signals a better potential for the participation of women in fisheries development and planning.

There is need for a research programme that systematically tackles gender issues and women's participation and integration in fisheries development. There must be a greater understanding of gender roles and relations within the family or household, and the institutional framework within which these roles have evolved through time.

The major drawback is the lack of access to institutional sources of credit. Fisheries in general have not been serviced by the institutional credit sources. Most credit institutions have not been able to recognise them well enough to cater to their specific needs. Under such circumstances, the credit needs of women for fish marketing often get ignored.

The non-institutional sources of credit (i.e. large traders, boat owners, moneylenders and wholesalers) account for more than 60%of the credit with the cost of credit varying from 120-800%. Therefore in a situation where the fisheries sector suffers from poor access to institutional credit sources, women are further marginalised.