Gender, the work‐life course, and livelihood strategies in a South Indian fish market

Abstract

This article examines how gender ideologies differentially inform men and women's work-life courses in the fishing economy of southern India. Drawing on interviews conducted with fish traders in Trivandrum, India in 1993-94 and 1999, we construct economic life histories for men and women traders. These are then used to illustrate how gender creates different patterns of paid work for men and women throughout their life courses and to analyze how men and women formulate livelihood strategies differently as a result.

Gender and mobility: new approaches for informing sustainability

“…This body of work has informed understandings of how mobility and immobility are implicated in creating, reinforcing and changing the meanings and practices of gender (see, e.g., Valentine 1989;Koskela 1999;Hapke and Ayyankeril 2004;Mandel 2004;Kern 2005;Wright 2005). I should stress at the outset that the chief question driving most such studies has not necessarily been how mobility shapes gender, and yet mobility and immobility have been central to these analyses.…”

Resource degradation, marginalization, and poverty in small-scale fisheries: threats to social-ecological resilience in India and Brazil

“…We will elaborate on how human-environment disconnection is a key indicator of the prevalence and negative consequences of poverty. Human-environment disconnection may also have serious implications for individual and community identity and future empowerment options (Hapke andAyyankeril 2004, Neis et al 2005).…”

“…In fisher societies, poverty can be closely linked to individual and community identity (Hapke and Ayyankeril 2004, Neis et al 2005, Power 2005). Particularly in Chilika, food insecurity and increased poverty are closely associated with community members losing their identities as customary caste-based fishers.…”

Making a Living the Hmong Way: An Actor-Oriented Livelihoods Approach to Everyday Politics and Resistance in Upland Vietnam

“…On its own, a livelihood approach can be criticized for its inclination to focus primarily on aspects of material access and ability, often ignoring less evident social and political influences (Kanji, MacGregor, and Tacoli 2005;Scoones 2009). The approach is also prone to facilitate only a cursory examination of the importance of gender with regard to differential access to resources and decision making (Hapke and Ayyankeril 2004). Furthermore, the focus on identifying and analyzing five specific forms of assets or capitals-an approach commonly adopted by development agencies such as the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-has been criticized as producing a "one-size-fits-all" methodology, with the potential to be used uncritically while ignoring local agency (Arce 2003;Hinshelwood 2003;Staples 2007;Scoones 2009;Forsyth and Michaud 2010).…”