Tides of Resilience: Gender and Coping Strategies during Covid Pandemic Across Marine Fisher Households in India

Abstract

With a renewed focus on gender and households in the post-COVID-19 era, there is a need for community-specific studies to understand the impact of the pandemic on particularly precarious communities. This paper addresses this need by focusing on fisher families across nine coastal states in India, attempting to bring to the fore how gender influences their choices of domains and strategies. Examining how women and men—as heads of households—engaged in various capacities (labourer, trader, auction agents), the fisheries sector relied upon different sources to deal with the impact of COVID. Based on an extensive survey covering all nine coastal districts, five major coping domains - consumption, employment, fishing, social support and health- were identified and specific strategies adopted by the households were examined. The paper draws on data from 420 women-headed households and 420 male-headed households and identified the increasing reliance of women on government and community level structures to tide over difficulties contrasting with the reliance male headed households placed on themselves and family. As far as consumption and social coping domains were concerned, increasing reliance by women headed households was on self and community while male headed households relied on family and relatives. There was greater congruence between female- and male-headed households in strategies adopted in the domains of employment and social support, with both opting to engage in part-time fishing and in relief activities respectively. While women preferred to adapt their own tastes to maintain consumption while men relied on using past savings. Finally, as far as health was concerned, women placed greater emphasis on maintaining hygiene while men relied on accessing the vaccine.