Gender, Maritime Labour and Embodied Ecologies : Jeju Haenyeo and the Politics of Female Free Diving

The haenyeoーwomen free divers of Jeju Island in the Republic of Korea－constitute one of the most distinctive gendered maritime labour systems in the world. For centuries, these women have harvested marine products through breath-hold diving, forming cooperative institutions, sustaining household economies, and transmitting ecological knowledge across generations. This article examines the haenyeo tradition through feminist political economy, theories of embodiment, and environmental anthropology. It argues that the haenyeo represent neither a simple case of matriarchy nor a romanticized survival of tradition, but rather a historically contingent gendered labour formation shaped by ecological constraint, state policy, colonial capitalism, and neoliberal heritage politics. The paper traces the historical emergence of female-dominated diving, analyzes household power dynamics and cooperative governance, examines embodied adaptation and gender performativity, and interrogates the contemporary transformation of haenyeo labour under climate change and cultural commodification. By situating the haenyeo within broader debates about gender, labour, and environmental governance, this study contributes to feminist scholarship on maritime economies and challenges universalizing assumptions about patriarchy and female embodiment.