Women are accounted for about 50 per cent of the workforce in fisheries and aquaculture when secondary elements such as processing and trading are included (World Fish, 2014) but in developing countries, they face substantive challenges to engaging in and benefiting equitably from these sectors. Keeping these facts in view this research paper aimed to analyse the socioeconomic profile and gender equity of supporting actors of the dry fish value chain in India. A sample of 156 labourers, involved in various value chain activities at different stages of the dry fish value chain of the country was selected using a stratified random sampling method for the collection of primary data during 2015. The participation of women in dry fish value chain activities was 38 per cent, which was encouraging. The women are mainly involved in light activities such as cleaning, tying, drying, assembling, sorting, grading and packaging of dry fish. The test statistics for two sample mean of income and expenditure of male and female labourers were found to be insignificant at a 5 per cent level of significance. It clearly indicates that females were at par with the male labourers in monthly income and expenditure. However, the variability was found more in income and expenditure of females as compared to the male labourers. Though the women were better placed in terms of employment and income generation in the dry fish value chain their access to business ownership and decision making in the dry fish value chain was found still poor.

Keyword: Dry fish value chain; Supporting chain activities; Socio economic profile; Gender equity; Labourer