Sailing between masculinity, risk and health among offshore fishers in Sinaloa, Mexico

Gender plays a fundamental role in shaping work experiences in the Mexican shrimp fishing industry and is crucial for understanding future interventions that need to consider the social and cultural dimensions of workers’ health in marine environments. This article aims to analyze conditions of maritime work and configurations of masculinities through industrial shrimp fishers’ perceptions of risk and health. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic research, I argue that in order to understand this relationship, it is important to consider the set of human and non-human agents that enable the reproduction, transformation and/or perpetuation of risky practices that sustain the construction and experience of maritime masculinities in shrimp fishing. This paper advances the academic debate within the social sciences of the sea by exploring the intersection of gender, masculinity, risk and health in the context of working conditions in maritime spaces.