GENDER, SUBSISTENCE FISHING AND ECONOMIC CHANGE. A COMPARATIVE STUDY IN SOUTHERN VERACRUZ, MEXICO

he purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which ethnic affiliation, gender ideology, ecological restrictions and economic change determine women’s roles in subsistence fishing. The setting of this research is the Sierra de Santa Marta (SSM), Mexico (see Map 1). The specific questions that we address are: how does ethnicity shape distinct gender ideologies regarding labor practices and concepts of work? How do ethnicity and gender ideology interact with restrictions posed by the ecology and economy to determine women’s access to freshwater resources? And finally, how does gender get reworked in the process? In answering these questions, we expect to contribute to the feminist literature on Gender and Development (GED) which examines the role that gender plays in development processes and the way it intersects with other factors such as class, race and ethnicity to determine women’s roles and status in Third World countries. uction T Research was conducted in Ixhuapan and Ocozotepec, two indigenou