Wife the deckhand, husband the skipper: Authority and dignity among fishing couples

One response of small-scale fishing entrepreneurs in north Norway to the resource crisis of the 1990s has been the pooling of family labor to keep all potential profits from reduced quotas within the household and family unit. This article describes one such adaptation by focusing on the interaction between wives and husbands in Norwegian small-scale family fishing enterprises. In their everyday practices of living and working together, these couples struggle to maintain economically viable lives through ecologically and socially sound fishing schemes. This article examines what happens in the power relationship between skipper and crew when women board a fishing vessel. Drawing on data from two case studies of wife/crew and husband/skipper relations. I focus on how the issue of shipper's authority is dealt with in the: context of gender equality characteristic of Norwegian society and I demonstrate how men's authority is actively created by their wives as they fish together. Theoretical and analytical perspectives draw from two very diverse bodies of literature, transactional analysis and the feminist analysis of caring. The data were collected by participant observation among fishing couples in northern Norway during the fall of 1993 and the spring of 1994. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.