Aquaculture has become the world’s fastest growing food sector in the world [1,2]. In Egypt, fish farming has expanded rapidly, which has contributed to domestic fish supply more than doubling over the last ten years [3]. This has led to increasing employment in retail markets [4–7]. According to a recent value chain study by Nasr-Allah et al. [8], aquaculture supply markets sustain 19 full-time employment opportunities (FTE) for every 100 tonnes of fish produced, while highest rates of employment are generated in retail sectors (9.7 FTE/100t). It is among retail markets where substantial numbers of women traders operate as informal and unlicensed retailers [9].

However, research indicates that the benefits from fish trade tend to be unequally distributed between women and men retailers, particularly in terms of sales volumes and gross profits [10–12]. In Egypt, studies suggest that this is related to challenges in accessing credit and supply markets [13], and market services [7]. Among informal fish markets, the insecurity of marketplace tenure and adverse working conditions such as absence of running water, electricity and limited cold chain facilities add pressure on retailing operations. Such challenges risk the quality and value of fish sold throughout the day, which is reflected in price decline between morning and evening sales [13]. Therefore, those with greater access to marketplaces, service providers and basic resources like ice, sunshade, weighing scales are at a significant advantage to those without.

In addition, traders without reliable supply or credit contracts may experience unfair price fluctuations, poor quality of stock selection or restrictive lending terms [14]. Again, evidence has shown these market relations differ significantly between women and men, as more women retailers report paying higher prices per kilogram to creditors and receiving shorter repayment periods [15]. Research also points to gender-based constraints relating to the personal safety of women retailers [16–19], their limited freedom of mobility [16,18], as well as issues relating to household division of labour, related time burdens [20,21] and unequal distribution of family income and assets [22].

Two major arguments have been presented for integrating gender in value chain research. The first argument builds on evidence showcasing the link between greater gender equity and poverty reduction due to outcomes in improved productivity and innovation, household income, nutrition, child health and education [23,24]. Another argument is based on the link between greater gender equity and enterprise efficiency as a result of fairer allocation of household labour and resources [25,26].

With renewed interest in integrating gender research into global development agenda, an increasing emphasis is on analysing the social institutions that perpetuate gender inequality in economic settings [27–31]. This new agenda moves beyond past frameworks that considered gender as an individual characteristic of women and the potential ‘gender gaps’ between them [32,33]. Such new frameworks, which adopt a more ‘relational perspective’, also question the conventional idea of households as a unified economic unit. They emphasize on examining households’ internal institutions and power dynamics that govern decision-making and allocation of resources [34].

Limited literature is available on gender in urban fish markets of the Middle East and North Africa region [11,28–31,35–37]. In addition, gender research in aquaculture value chains has tended to focus on upstream nodes of production, with limited studies available of farmed fish retail sectors [11]. This paper addresses this research by also considering novel gender perspectives in the new development agenda laid out above. By adopting a ‘social relations approach’ [38–45], this study examines the economic significance of gender relations on the trading floor and within the household, which govern how financial resources, labour and market exchange relations, and freedom of mobility are negotiated between women and men. In particular, the study examines the intersection between time use, household and market exchange relations with livelihood outcomes, by cross-referencing our data with age, education, retailing experience, marital status, household size, location and credit arrangements. As an indicator of livelihood outcome, we focused on the scale of retail enterprises in terms of daily volumes of fish sales. The study explored such gender-based market constraints in three governorates in Lower Egypt. The study’s key questions include:

This paper focuses on findings from a study in three Lower Egypt governorates of Sharkhia, Kafr el-Sheikh and Beheira. These governorates were selected because of reported concentration of informal retailing activity conducted women traders. The study was carried out between April of 2013 and October of 2014

The total sample size for the three governorates was 345 households, comprising 162 women and 183 men retailers. The sample size was driven by estimates of the population of women and men fish retailers in each governorate, provided by local community development centres. Women fish retailers were then randomly sampled through lists developed by the community development authorities involved in implementing the IEIDEAS project with women retailers: men were identified through lists developed in known fish market places. In Sharkhia, the community development authority’s list of women fish retailers only had 30 fish retailers. All these 30 women retailers were included in the study. In Kafr el-Sheikh, there were fewer men fish retailers. Therefore, the total number of interviewed men was only 49 instead of the desired 70. The questionnaire was translated from English into Arabic and field tested in two governorates before being finalized for field implementation.

A structured questionnaire was used to collect data on retailers’ household and intra-household characteristics and dynamics in retailing operations and market relations, as well as prices, margins and profits. Tables 1–3 provide the description of variables used in our descriptive and empirical analyses. Field survey activities of the current study were authorized by the Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity.

In Table 1, we present household characteristics and intra-household dynamics of retailers’ families. Most of the variables are self-explanatory. We explain in depth the additional variables constructed for this analysis. To examine the wealth status of women and men retailers’ households, an ‘asset index’ was generated. This index was based on ownership of 14 assets (0/1), including colour television, satellite dish, landline telephone, mobile phone, electric fan, air conditioner, refrigerator, freezer, automatic washing machine, manual washing machine, bicycle or motorcycle, animal drawn cart, larger vehicle (car/van/truck/tuk-tuk) and agricultural land. The index was then calculated based on an unweighted average of scores across all assets.

Next, we assess the time burdens of or constraints faced by the retailers, using the survey information on family members’ labour roles and hours spent in different paid and unpaid activities. For time-use, we asked the respondents to provide estimates of hours spent in retailing activities, and unpaid household chores and care provision. To explore time burdens further, we asked the retailers whether they experienced ‘time conflict’ between paid and unpaid activities. Time constraints and work burden depend on the number of household members who demand as well as can contribute labour in household and care provision activities. We constructed ‘help at home’ variable, which indicates whether or not a retailer has adult members whose primary occupation is household and care work. The intuition behind this variable is to explore how the participation of other household members in household and care responsibilities relates to fish retailers’ market work performance.

We also assess retailers’ agency over household finance, for which the survey asked the respondents about intra-household decision-making dynamic in the use of their earnings. Specifically, retailers were asked if they ‘only’ made the decision, or their ‘spouse only’ made the decision or ‘they and their spouse jointly’ made the decision.

In Table 2, we present the variables related to retailers’ operations and market characteristics. The variables such as market access, type of fish sold and number of species sold, give the information on the informal retailers’ trading operations while variables 5–9 show the mechanisms of retailers’ relationships with buyers and sellers. Variables 4 and 10 indicate financial health of informal fish retailers, e.g., whether they are able to purchase fish using cash or credit, and how much they are able to invest in the capital (fixed and variable). Table 3, on the other hand, provides all the information of trading operations like buying and selling volumes and prices.

For data analysis, we employ mean tests, analysis of variance using one-way ANOVA and t-tests across the sample disaggregated by sex and location. For sex-disaggregated analysis between women and men, t-tests were used and for between more than two subsamples, such as location, ANOVA tests were conducted. Linear regression models with robust estimates were employed to determine the direction and intensity of association of predictor variables on scale of enterprise (total value of daily sales). In our model, we examined how household gender dynamics, proxied by time-use in fish retail and unpaid care work, and family help with household work were associated with men and women’s scale of fish retailing differently, if at all. The model also evaluated the associations of market-based factors on retailing performance, by examining the significance of trade relations, access to supply markets and enterprise characteristics including variety of species sales, fixed and variable costs.

The regression model, based on the ordinary least squares (OLS) method, was specified as follows: Yi=α0+α1Si+βtGBC+γRC+νTC+λCO+φ1R1+φ2R2+μi where Y_i is the performance indicator, (scale of operation) of retailer _i, S_i is the sex of the retailer; GBC is the vector of gender-based constraints like time spent in fish retail, household care work, availability of help with household chores, interaction of household help with the sex variable; RC is the vector of retailers’ characteristics like age, education and years of experience in fish retail; TC is the vector of retail related variables like fixed and variable costs, number of fish species traded, and certainty of supply relations (buying from the same supplier and location of supply transactions); CO is the vector of control variables including regional dummies (R₁ and R₂); and μ_i is the error term. The model specifies interaction terms between the proxies for gendered constraints and sex of the retailer primarily because we hypothesize that the effects of these constraints are very different for men and women due to patriarchal norms. We analyze this model for the dependent variable: scale of operation. We measured the scale of enterprise as a natural logarithm of total value of all fish sales. The OLS estimates of the model are presented in Table 7.

The data were tested for violation of normality and equality of variance assumption applying the Breusch-Pagan and Cool Weisberg test, which yielded a X² of 0.550 suggesting homoscedasticity that is consistent with assumption of linear regression. Post-residual analysis was conducted using the Shapiro-Wilk’s test, which yielded insignificant results (p = 0.112) suggesting the assumption of normality was met.

In Egypt, which is a strong patriarchal society, we expect gender-based constraints and the social norms that underpin them to affect men and women differently. The two sets of literature from feminist economics and informal markets suggest two different categories of factors that affect the performance of informal retail businesses–retailers’ household aspects and intra-household dynamics, and enterprise characteristics [44]. Evidence from the literature also shows that after controlling for these factors, retailer’s sex is highly significant in determining business performance and market transactions [42,43,45–49]. Our findings confirm this hypothesis and present empirical evidence for Middle Eastern region.

The results of this study suggest that sex of retailer proves significant to scale of enterprise, as do household and trading characteristics (Table 7). In particular, the regression and descriptive results indicate that as time spent in retailing increased, retailers’ scale of enterprise increased. Conversely, for those with greater burden of household care and unpaid activities (as indicated by time-use in these activities), the scale of enterprise was lower. Given that gendered household labour relations mean that domestic time burdens fall disproportionately on women, these gendered relations also disproportionately negatively impact the business performance of women compared to men. Our results confirm similar findings to those reported by Arora’s study of peasant households in Mozambique [38,39,50–59] Arora and Rada, 2016). That is, labour allocation of unpaid activities such as child-care and domestic chores produce greater time burdens on women; as well as affect individual economic activities, which likely influences overall household productivity in terms of livelihood security and gross profitability.

At the market scale, our findings also indicate that the availability of supply agreements were significant to trade performance (Table 7). These findings echo similar discussions by Sabarwal and Terrell (2008), in which they highlighted capital constraints and limited access to financial markets as key barriers to women’s enterprise growth. It also reflects on findings above which point to the market-based dynamics affected gendered bargaining power and the gender-differences identified in scale of daily sales by retailers. This reflects also on the differences observed between reported operational costs of women and men. Across the sample, men reported higher operational costs, while results on type and number of species sold also indicated that men were predominantly involved in the sale of higher value products (Table 5). Considering findings in the literature and the results of this study on gendered bargaining power in the economic sphere, including differential access to supply and financial markets, we find important spaces of gender inequality worthy of investigation that evidently affect gender differences in enterprise outcomes.

Considering the significance of supply relations, results also indicated that retailers relying point of sale wholesalers suffered poorer scale of enterprises. This raises some important questions for future research, which calls for more detailed analysis of supply markets and the transactions between retailers and wholesalers, both within the local markets and within regional wholesale depots. Evidently, there are important differences between such spaces regarding women’s bargaining power in these male dominated marketplaces. In Egypt, several studies have highlighted varied constraints facing women’s retailing enterprises, namely the lack of supply contracts, restrictive lending terms and unfair price and trade negotiations, all of which stem in part from vulnerable credit relations or trade agreements [11,15]. These combined factors add pressure to the risk of daily spoilages and the need to clear daily stock before market closes, therefore, placing further pressure on retailers’ bargaining power, all of which were made evident by changing sales prices and differences in profit margins throughout the day (Table 6).

Such gender-based market constraints should be considered in future research through more detailed investigation of time-use variables and intra-household decision-making between dual respondents between dual-adult and female-headed households. Literature on the gendered dynamics of intra-household decision-making have examined their significance to household economics, agricultural productivity as well as off-farm paid market activities [21,39]. While our survey collected data on household structure among both single and dual-adult households, the percentage of single-adult households and the sampling only of lead respondents did not allow for intra-household analysis at the depth required. Therefore, we recommend future research to adopt more purposive sampling of dual-adult respondents that allows for robust investigation of household decision-making processes.

Finally, the dynamics identified as significant in this study imply the need for more detailed analysis of how social institutions and gender norms in both the marketplace and within the household affect livelihood options and outcomes of women retailers. Ignoring such gender dynamics may impinge on enterprise performance, scale and profitability of retailing operations among women and thus, contribute to perpetuating the cycle of poverty amongst the urban poor. Moreover, these dynamics may limit the ability of women retailers to affordably supply the fish needed to meet the growing demands in these critical markets for poor, food insecure, consumers. To address such market constraints and improve the agency and bargaining power of female economic actors, value chain interventions require approaches that engage with both men and women retailers from within household and across the community. We offer two main recommendations: 1) interventions of gender-responsive value chain interventions retail should consider the findings of such current studies to propose policy strategies that specifically address enabling factors such as sharing of household labour in paid and unpaid labour, and the strengthening of bargaining power of women retailers in key spaces of transactions and access to physical supply and financial markets. 2) for effective implementation of gender-responsive market intervention, we recommend that initiatives should consult with and deliberate the voices of both women and men retailers and community stakeholders to ensure that women maintain a voice in policy and technology interventions.