Climate change disproportionately affects marginalized groups, especially women. To guide the integration of gender roles in interventions to improve adaptation, we examined gender roles among fishers on Lake Wamala, Uganda, which has been increasingly affected by climate change. We found lower participation of women than men in preharvest and postharvest fishing activities, with 99% of fishers and 92.9% of fish processors and traders combined being men. The men had more fishing experience, started fishing at a younger age and exited at a later age, targeted more species, used more fishing gears and bought more fish for processing and trading. Although we observed diversification to non-fishery livelihoods, such as crop and livestock production to increase food security and income among others, income from these activities was not controlled or shared equally between men and women. Compared to men, women worked longer hours, engaging in more simultaneous activities both in and out of the home and reported less time resting. The income controlled by women was used directly to meet household needs. The implications of these differences for adaptation, what men and women can do best to enhance adaptation and how some adaptation practices and interventions can be implemented to benefit both men and women are discussed.

Inland fisheries support the livelihoods of millions of people in riparian communities worldwide but are influenced by increasing climate variability and change. Freshwater fishing societies are among the most vulnerable to climate change given their dependence on highly threatened aquatic resources. As climate change intensifies, building adaptive capacity within communities and understanding the efficacy of adaptive strategies for maintaining household stability is essential for coping with ongoing social and environmental change. In this study, we examined household perceptions of climate change, livelihood impacts and responses to socio‐ecological changes in fishing‐dependent households in the Lake Victoria basin in Uganda, East Africa. Through a series of household surveys and focus group discussions in five fish landing sites, we assessed social adaptive capacity (SAC) based on 207 households and identified adaptive strategies that are effective for coping with climatic change. We found that people in fishing households are aware of environmental change but that most households do not have adaptive strategies that are efficacious for securing long‐term income and food security. We also investigated household demographics that contribute to SAC, examined links between SAC and adaptive efficacy and established potential routes towards developing effective adaptive approaches in small‐scale fisheries. This work contributes to a growing foundation of documented community‐based knowledge for building adaptive capacity in inland fisheries and the communities around the world that depend on them. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.