Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T19:19:47.973Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Women in the Fishing: The Roots of Power between the Sexes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
Affiliation:
University of Essex
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Fishing is commoniy thought of as a man's business. Yet fishing has a special interest for understanding the position of women, both past and present. There is a double reason for this: for the masculine image of the industry conceals the reality of an occupation which, by removing men to sea, makes them peculiarly dependent on the work of women ashore. And this dependence gives women not only more responsibility, but also the possibility of more power, both in the home and in the community. My concern here is therefore with the sexual division both of labour and of power. Of the two issues, the second is considerably more complicated. For while the character of women's work in fishing communities has again and again taken parallel forms in different societies, this is much less true of its consequences for the social position of women.

Type
Work and Social Roles
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , January 1985 , pp. 3 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andersen, Raoul, ed. 1979. North Atlantic Maritime Cultures: Anthropological Essays on Changing Adaptions. The Hague.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andersen, Raoul and C, Wadel., eds. 1972. North Atlantic Fishermen. St. John's, Newfoundland.Google Scholar
Andrews, Raymond A. 1973. “Female Participation in the Port de Grave Fishery.” Manuscript. Centre for Newfoundland Studies, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's.Google Scholar
Anson, P. F. 1930. Fishing Boats and Fisher Folk on the East Coast of Scotland. London.Google Scholar
Berggreen, Brit. 1977. “Maritim etnologi, sjofartssamfunn og kvinner.” Dugnad, 2, 7–16.Google Scholar
Berggreen, Brit. 1979. “Kvinner i maritime naeringar.” Syn og Segn, 3, 163–76.Google Scholar
Berggreen, Brit. 1980a. “Kystens kvinner-kystens bonder.” Norges kulturhistorie, 5, 75–92.Google Scholar
Berggreen, Brit. 1980b. “Skipet som hjem: kvinner og barn på langfatt.” Manuscript.Google Scholar
Bertram, James. 1865. The Harvest of the Sea: A Contribution to the Natural and Economic History of the British Food Fishes. London.Google Scholar
Blood, Robert O., AND Wolfe, Donald M. 1960. Husbands and Wives: The Dynamics of Married Living. New York.Google Scholar
Bochel, M. 1979. “Dear Gremista”: The Story of Nairn Fisher Girls at the Gutting. National Museum of Antiquities. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Brox, Ottar. 1964. “Natural Conditions, Inheritance, and Marriage in a North Norwegian Fjord.” Folk, 6:1, 35–45.Google Scholar
Buchan, Margaret. 1977. “Social Organisation of Fisher-girls.” Paper presented at Conference on Fishing Communitiesin Northeastern Scotland, Aberdeen, June.Google Scholar
Christensen, J. B. 1977. “Motor Power and Woman Power: Technological and Eco nomic Change among the Fanti Fishermen of Ghana,” in Those Who Live from the Sea, Smith, M. E., ed. St. Paul.Google Scholar
Conklin, George H. 1981. “Cultural Determinants of Power for Women within the Family: A Neglected Aspect of Family Research,” in Women in the Family and the Economy: an International Comparative Survey, Kurian, George and Ghosh, Ratna, eds., 9–27. Westport and London.Google Scholar
Cronin, Constance. 1970. The Sting of Change: Sicilians in S?cily and Australia. Chicago.Google Scholar
Davidoff, Leonore. 1974. “Mastered for Life: Servant and Wife in Victorian and Edwardian England.” Journal of Social History, 7, 406–28.Google Scholar
Davidoff, Leonore. 1977. “Power as an ‘Essentially Contested Concept’: Can It Be of Use to Feminist Historians?” Paper presented to International Women's History Conference,University of Maryland, November.Google Scholar
Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, C. 1983. “The Architecture of Public and Private Space: English Middle-Class Society in a Provincial Town, 1780–1850,” in The Pursuit of Urban History, Sutcliffe, A.et al., eds., 326–46. London.Google Scholar
Davidoff, Leonore; L'Esperance, J. and Newby, H. 1976. “Landscape with Figures: Home and Community in English Society,” in The Rights and Wrongs of Women, Mitchell, J. and Oakley, A., eds., 139–75. London.Google Scholar
Davis, Dona Lee. 1980. “Women's Experience of the Menopause in a Newfoundland Fishing Village.” Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina.Google Scholar
Dubois, E., et al. 1980. “Politics and Culture in Women's History: A Symposium.” Feminist Studies, 6, 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, P. J., AND Marshall, J. 1977. “Sources of Conflict and Community in the Trawling Industries of Hull and Grimbsy between the Wars.” Oral History, 5:1, 97–121.Google Scholar
Ek, Sven B. 1980. Borstahusen—ett fiskeläges uppgång och fall. Landskrona.Google Scholar
Engels, F. 1972. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. London.Google Scholar
Ennew, Judith. 1980. The Western Isles Today. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Faris, James. 1966. Cat Harbour: A Newfoundland Fishing Settlement. St. John's.Google Scholar
Firestone, Melvin. 1967. Brothers and Rivals: Patrilocaliiy in Savage Cove. St. John's.Google Scholar
Firth, Raymond. 1946. Malay Fishermen: Their Peasant Economy. London.Google Scholar
Forman, Shepherd. 1970. The Raft Fishermen. London.Google Scholar
Fox, Robin. 1978. The Tory Islanders: A People of the Celtic Fringe. London.Google Scholar
Frank, Peter. 1976. “Women's Work in the Yorkshire Inshore Fishing Industry.” Oral History, 4:1, 57–72.Google Scholar
Gillespie, D. 1972. “Who Has the Power? The Marital Struggle,” in Family. Marriage and the Struggle of the Sexes, Dreitzel, H. P., ed., London.Google Scholar
Gulati, Leela. 1982. Profiles in Female Poverty: A Study of Five Poor Working Women in Kerala. Oxford.Google Scholar
Gulati, Leela. 1983. Women in Fishing Villages on the Kerala Coast: Demographic and Socio-Economic Impacts of a Fisheries Development Project. Population and La bour Policies Programme Working Paper 18. International Labour Office, Geneva.Google Scholar
Hall, Catherine. 1980. “Class Formation and Gender Dimensions: The Birmingham Middle Class, 1780–1850,” in People's History and Socialist Theory, Samuel, R., ed., 164–75. London.Google Scholar
Henningen, Marie-Luisa Rey. 1980. “Galicia, State of Women.” Spare Rib, 70, 27–29.Google Scholar
Hornell, James. 1950. Fishing in Many Waters. London.Google Scholar
Jorion, Paul. 1977. “L'ordre moral dans une petite ile de Bretagne.” Etudes rurales, 67, 35–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Löfgren, Orvar. 1974. “Family and Household among Scandinavian Peasants: An Exploratory Essay.” Ethnologia Scandinavica, 4, 17–52.Google Scholar
Löfgren, Orvar. 1979. “Marine Ecotypes in Preindustrial Sweden: A Comparative Discussion of Swedish Peasant Fishermen,” in North Atlantic Maritime Cultures: An thropological Essays on Changing Adaptions, Andersen, Raoul, ed. The Hague. Loti, Pierre. 1888. An Iceland Fisherman. London.Google Scholar
Lummis, Trevor. 1978. The Family and Community Life of East Anglian Fishermen. Social Science Research Council. Final report, HR 2656. London.Google Scholar
H., Mackenzie, et al., eds. 1951-. Third Statistical Account. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, Virginia Yans. 1971. “Patterns of Work and Family Organization: Buffalo's Italians.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2, 299–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Makhlouf, C. 1979. Changing Veils: Women and Modernisation in North Yemen. London.Google Scholar
Mead, Margaret, 1935. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. New York.Google Scholar
Michel, Andrée. 1970. “Working Wives and Family Interaction in French and Ameri can Families.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 11, 157–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mondardini, Gabriella. 1981. Villagi di Pescatori in Sardegna, Sassari.Google Scholar
Muir, Margaret. 1977. “Professional Women and Network Maintenance in a French and an English Canadian Fishing Village.” Atlantis, 2:2, 45–55.Google Scholar
Muir, Margaret. 1978. “The Paid Housekeeper: Socialisation and Sex Roles in Two Fishing Villages,” in Papers of the Fourth Canadian Ethnology Society Congress, Preston, R., ed., 85–98. Canadian Ethnology Service Paper 40, National Museum of Man. Ottawa.Google Scholar
Murray, Hilda. 1979. More than 50%: Women's Life in a Newfoundland Outport, 1900–50. St. John's.Google Scholar
Nelson, Cynthia. 1974. “Private and Public Politics: Women in the Middle Eastern World.” American Anthropologist, 1, 551–65.Google Scholar
Norbeck, Edward. 1954. Takashima, a Japanese Fishing Community. Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Oakley, Ann. 1981. Subject Women. London.Google Scholar
Paine, Robert. 1965. Coast Lapp Society II. Tromsø.Google Scholar
Pedersen, Von Ragner. 1975. “Die Arbeitsteilung zwischen Frauen und Männern in einem Ackerbaugebeit-Das Bespeil Norwegen.” Ethnologia Scandinavica, 5, 37–48.Google Scholar
Persson, Yvonne. 1977. “Evaluations and Roles at the Island of Ockerö.” Fataburen (Sweden).Google Scholar
Porter, Marilyn. 1982. “Women and Old Boats: The Sexual Division of Labour in a Newfoundland Outport.” Manuscript.Google Scholar
Porter, Marilyn. 1983. “‘A Tangly Bunch’: The Political Culture of Outport Women in Newfoundland.” Paper presented to the Association of Atlantic Sociologists and Anthropologists,Halifax.Google Scholar
Recher, Jean. 1977. Le grand métier: Journal d'un capitaine de pêche de Fécamp. Paris.Google Scholar
Reiter, Rayna Rapp. 1975. “Men and Women in the South of France: Public and Private Domains,” in Towards an Anthropology of Women, Reiter, R. R., ed., 252–82. London.Google Scholar
Safilios-Rothschild, Constantina. 1967. “A Comparison of Power Structure and Marital Satisfaction in Urban Greek and French Families.” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 29, 345–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scanzoni, J. 1972. Sexual Bargaining: Power Politics in the American Marriage. Englewood Cliffs.Google Scholar
Scase, R., AND Goffee, R. 1980. The Real World of the Small Business Owner. London.Google Scholar
Scott, Joan W., AND Tilly, Louise A. 1975. “Women's Work and the Family in Nineteenth-Century Europe.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 17:1, 36–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, Sir Walter. 1816. The Antiquary. Edinburgh. (Everyman, London, 1907.)Google Scholar
Sharma, Ursula. 1980. Women, Work, and Property in North-West India. London.Google Scholar
Smith, M. E., ed. 1977. Those Who Live From the Sea. St. Paul.Google Scholar
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. 1975. “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America.” Signs, 1, 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stacey, Margaret, AND Price, Marion. 1981. Women, Power and Politics. London.Google Scholar
Stoklund, Bjarne. 1971. “Okologisk tilpasning et Dansk osamfund,” in Ekologi och Kultur, Daum, A. and Löfgren, O., eds., 35–40. Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Thompson, Paul. 1975. The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society. London.Google Scholar
Thompson, Paul. 1978. The Voice of the Past: Oral History. Oxford.Google Scholar
Thompson, Paul. 1981. “Life Histories and the Analysis of Social Change,” in Biography and Society: The Life History Approach in the Social Sciences, Bertaux, Daniel, ed., 289–306. London.Google Scholar
Thompson, Paul. 1982. “Family, Economy, and Ideology: The Role of Women and Children in Change.” Paper presented at World Congress of Sociology,Mexico City, August.Google Scholar
Thompson, Paul, with Walley, , Tony, , AND Lummis, Trevor. 1983. Living the Fishing. London.Google Scholar
Tolosana, Carmelo Lison. 1971. Anthropologie social de Galicia. Madrid.Google Scholar
Tunstall, Jeremy. 1962. The Fishermen: The Sociology of an Extreme Occupation. London.Google Scholar
Whitaker, Ian. 1972. “Seafarer and Community: Aspects of Organisation in Maritime Communities.” University of Wales Institute of Technology, Cardiff.Google Scholar