Our research

The Women in Fisheries research project explored women’s identities and wellbeing across the UK fishing industry.

This work was led by Dr Madeleine Gustavsson, who spoke to women who were part of fishing families, entrepreneurs in the industry, and who worked onboard fishing vessels. This work has helped to shed light on the often overlooked and important roles that women play in the sector.

Madeleine focused on understanding what fishing, and being part of a fishing family, means to the women involved from their own perspective. The project’s main findings can be organised into four key areas, discussed below.

You can view all research published from this project here ⟹

Through their social, economic, and emotional contributions, women ensure the resilience of fishing businesses, families, and places.

We have helped to uncover women’s hidden roles in fishing families, which span a range of skills within family-run businesses. Women often run the administrative side of these enterprises, completing paperwork, VAT returns, and health and safety risk assessments.

They also often have other jobs which provide important incomes to sustain fishing families in times of economic hardship.

Moreover, women often perform roles crucial to maintaining a functioning household, such as taking care of children when male fishers are away at sea.

Our findings also reveal how women’s wellbeing is tied to the fishery – with women directly bearing some of the negative costs caused by decline, stresses, and crises in the sector.

Read more in the research paper Recognizing Women’s Wellbeing and Contribution to Social Resilience in Fisheries, published in the journal Society and Natural Resources here doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2021.2022259.

Women have strong senses of belonging to fishing places and are active in developing these communities.

They are often engaged in activities to promote mental health or ocean sustainability.

But women – in particular those who fish – also struggle to be included in groups of typically male fishers, and have to engage in the politics of belonging to become accepted.

Whilst women in the UK industry are often forgotten in fisheries discussions, our research finds that they can influence and develop fishing places through their presence, initiatives, and sense of belonging.

More specifically, by either confirming or challenge longstanding notions of inclusion and exclusion in the fishery, women can both maintain and change fishing places.

Read more about this theme in the research paper Women’s belongings in UK fisheries., published in the journal Gender, Place and Culture here https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2021.1873748.

This entrepreneurship can revolve around processing, selling, or cooking fish and shellfish.

The fish that the women add value to is often caught by a family member – commonly a partner or husband.

Our findings reveal that even if these women comply with the localised gender norms, they simultaneously find some room to manoeuvre within their entrepreneurship.

Through their entrepreneurship, women can perform new forms of femininity which are often celebrated in their own right through this work.

Read more about this theme in the research paper The invisible (woman) entrepreneur? Shifting the discourse from fisheries diversification to entrepreneurship, published in Sociologia Ruralis here https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12343.

The research conducted a review of existing literature on women in fishing.

This review revealed that new perspectives on women’s fishing lives were needed.

We argued that there is a need to attend to women’s own subjectivities and identities, and to understand women’s lives in a particular context.

We must attend to women’s lived experiences and research the working conditions of women to get a fuller picture of how an understanding of women in fishing ‘in their own right’ (without subordinating their work as secondary to that of men who fish) can be developed.

Read more about this theme in the research paper Women’s changing productive practices, gender relations and identities in fishing through a critical feminisation perspective, published in the Journal of Rural Studies here https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2020.06.006.