Invisibility, Adversity and Agency: the impacts of Covid-19 on women in coastal communities in the Gulf of Guinea

As Covid-19 continues to pose a public health crisis globally, the complexity of the pandemic’s impacts is increasingly being revealed, with gendered inequalities and vulnerabilities amplified across the globe. This paper examines the gendered effects of Covid-19, with emphasis on how women in coastal communities across the Gulf of Guinea are affected. It sheds conceptual and empirical light on the gendered conditions of adversity and agency that the pandemic has produced among these populations. Coastal communities in the Gulf of Guinea rely primarily on exploiting coastal and marine resources and fishing in particular, for their food and income security. Fisheries are crucial to the broader food security needs of regional and continental populations, which serve as the primary (and sometimes exclusive) source of animal protein. At the state and regional levels, the economic significance of coastal maritime activities accounts for 56% of GDP in West Africa. Women in coastal communities play a critical role in maritime engagement, and comprise the majority of fish processors and sellers (fishmongers), while men dominate in the area of fishing. In West Africa, women finance fishing activities by men and market 80% of seafood in the region. Yet, despite a robust maritime security and development infrastructure taking root throughout the region and continent, women’s roles and vulnerabilities remain largely invisible within maritime governance, policy and practice. These institutional silences have structurally entrenched gender inequalities and discrimination, which Covid-19 has further amplified. In illuminating the impacts of Covid-19 on women in coastal communities in the Gulf of Guinea, this paper conceptually and empirically advances our understandings of the necessary but neglected role that women play in the critical maritime domain and the particular inequalities and vulnerabilities they are confronted with as a result. This analysis uses the vignette of the Covid-19 pandemic to expose the gender inequalities that pervade maritime governance and engagement in coastal communities throughout the Gulf of Guinea and empirically disentangles the inequalities that the pandemic has heightened, as well as the agency with which women have responded to it. This paper proceeds in three parts; part one conceptualises women’s position within the broader maritime security and development discourses in the Gulf of Guinea. Parts two and three then turn to an empirical examination of the impacts of Covid-19 on women in coastal communities throughout the Gulf of Guinea. Part two analyses how the global crisis has amplified their inequalities and vulnerabilities in coastal communities, while part three illuminates the myriad forms of agency that these women are exercising in response to their amplified vulnerabilities.