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Paper short abstract:

Data on women's subjective wellbeing in fishing communities in South Asia demonstrate the prevalence of alcoholism and domestic violence as common barriers to wellbeing. These are significant problems in fishing societies worldwide, which are set to worsen with depleting access to marine resources.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents empirical research into women's subjective wellbeing from two fishing communities in India and Sri Lanka. Findings demonstrate the particular importance of good marital relations in women's self-assessments of wellbeing, and the prevalence of alcoholism and domestic violence in fishing households, which act as frequent barriers to wellbeing. Whilst high rates of domestic violence in South Asia are widely acknowledged in the literature, we develop a rationale as to why we might reasonably expect alcoholism and domestic violence to be significant problems in fishing-dependent societies both within South Asia, and beyond, due to the nature of work and stresses placed on marital relations, stress which may be growing in light of declining marine resources and their changing governance. Encouraged by recent calls for more gendered approaches to environmental management, we further argue that some aspects of marine resource conservation may inadvertently place already vulnerable women into greater harm by restricting access to marine resources in ways that undermine women's property rights and income-earning capabilities - factors which can significantly enhance women's position in the household and reduce the occurrence of domestic violence. We offer a vignette to illustrate the impacts of marine conservation on women in the India study to support our argument, and suggest that conservation initiatives must place women's wellbeing, in particular the problems of alcoholism and domestic violence, more centrally in their decision-making.