Hear Me Speak: Italian and Portuguese Women Facing Fisheries Management

Abstract

Abstract: Declines in the principal groundfish stocks of New England led to the development of Amendment 5 to the New England Fishery Management Council's Multispecies Management Plan. Implemented about year and half ago, Amendment 5 incorporated phased-in series of increasingly strict management measures. Recently, however, the management council took proposed Amendment 7 to public hearing, series of extremely strict measures intending not only to halt overfishing, but to begin stock rebuilding.Two of the major groundfish ports in the northeast are Gloucester, dominated by first- and second-generation Italians, and New Bedford whose groundfish fleet is predominantly Portuguese. The women of the two ports face the same potential impacts associated with the current crisis in the fisheries. Loss of incomes, vessels and homes has already begun. When the public hearings for Amendment 7 were held, many Gloucester women attended and number testified. In contrast, there were no Portuguese women at the hearing in New Bedford.In Gloucester, the women have transformed an organization that began as campaign to promote cooking of underutilized species of fish into an active lobbying force, collaborative problem-solving agency and proactive civic group. No similar organization has arisen in New Bedford. This article postulates that, contrary to public opinion, ethnicity does not explain the differences in the activities of the women of these two ports, offers some alternative reasons and suggests why these are significant for fisheries management.IntroductionMembers of fishing communities often refer to fishing as a way of life (Gatewood and McCay 1988:126; McGoodwin 1990:24). Indeed, many attributes are common to the industry wherever in the world it is found. Conversations with otter trawl fishermen(f.1) in New Bedford and Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the 1990s echo conversations held in the 1980s with pirogue fishers of Guet N'dar, Senegal, which, in turn, echoed conversations with Portuguese-American fishermen in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in the 1970s (Hall-Arber 1975, 1988). One of the attributes that often surprises those who know little about the industry is how important the role of women frequently is to this stereotypical male occupation. While it is true that women who fish commercially are rather rare, documentation of women's shore-side activities reveal that their tasks are commonly essential to the functioning and continuity of the industry (Binkley 1995; Danowski 1980; Gladwin 1980; Hall-Arber 1988; McGoodwin 1990; Nadel-Klein and Davis 1988; Thompson 1985. See also Fields 1996 for study of Alaskan women who fish).This article considers the roles of women of fishing families in two important ports in Massachusetts: New Bedford and Gloucester. Commencing with public hearing on proposed changes to the New England Fishery Management Council's Multispecies Management Plan which controls fishing for groundfish (e.g., cod, haddock and yellowtail flounder), similarities and contrasts between the activities of women of the two ports are examined with the goal of identifying how community gains and retains its voice.Can differences in ethnicity explain the contrasts between the women of Gloucester and New Bedford in the levels and types of participation in their communities? This article suggests that ethnicity is only one factor among host of other reasons that the voice of Gloucester in the fish management process is often female while it is rarely so in New Bedford. Other factors to be considered include: economic characteristics of the two cities; individual leadership and status of organizations; and attachment to community as territorial unit.Though social scientists have long grappled with the concept of community, the search for an appropriate definition has lately become relevant to fisheries management with the currency of co-management ideas. …