Advancing Gender-Equitable Blue Economy Governance: Policy Reforms for Kerala

Women form the backbone of Kerala’s fisheries-related livelihoods, especially in post-harvest and allied coastal activities such as fish vending, processing, drying, seaweed farming, coir work, and small food enterprises. Yet, despite Kerala’s long-standing welfare orientation and multiple sectoral schemes, most of these women remain informal employees and excluded from formal systems of recognition, infrastructure, and social protection. Existing research has clearly documented women’s marginalisation in fisheries, but there is limited analysis of why exclusion persists even in a policy-rich context like Kerala. This paper argues that the core problem lies not in the absence of schemes, but in the way, institutions are designed and implemented. Using secondary evidence from Kerala-specific studies, government evaluations, and policy documents, the paper identifies four critical governance gaps: incomplete worker registration, lack of accessible working capital, gender-neutral infrastructure design, and fragmented welfare delivery. To address these gaps, the paper proposes four practical and integrated institutional reforms that is built on existing systems rather than creating new ones. These study shows that strengthening recognition, automatic inclusion, and accountability can significantly improve women’s livelihood security and participation in kerala’s blue economy.