Gender, Labor, and Everyday Life in Dried Fish Production: Treading Three “Paths” in the Indian Sundarbans

This study explores a gendered dimension of labor in enmeshed household and subsistence work of women in dried fish production in the Indian Sundarbans. It follows three groups—fish processors, hajira , and traders representing three crisscrossing “paths” of women fishworkers in dried fish economy, to note their distinctive experiences of labor and how it is organized through repetitive, routinized, and simultaneous tasks across space and time. Drawing on a feminist political economy perspective, the study connects women's everyday activities to entrenched power asymmetries and ongoing economic changes, to trace specific institutional and ideological conditions under which women's “total labor” manifests. Conceptually, the study contributes to feminist political economy by foregrounding what constitutes women's “spacetime” and how it is navigated, enacted and negotiated in the lesser‐known world of dried fish production. It argues that women's labor cannot be understood solely through wage relations or domestic work, but must be situated within the wider socio‐economic processes shaping their everyday lives. It concludes by making the case for emancipatory policies that address on‐the‐ground gendered inequalities and recognize women as central actors in the social economy of dried fish.