It’s no secret that a declining or collapsed fishery has a ripple effect on home ports and communities. Now a group of Nova Scotia women has produced a study on how women’s health is affected.
“Women’s Health and Well-being in Six Nova Scotia Fishing Communities” has been published by the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW) in conjunction with the Nova Scotia Women’s FishNet.
Stella Lord of CRIAW in Halifax, one of the study’s authors, says she knew the decline of the fishery was tough on women, “but when we began the study we found that it was worse than we expected. We knew, for example, that there was a great deal of stress, but we came to understand that women in these coastal communities were really under a lot of stress.”
The study quotes a woman from Moon Bay as follows: “My husband was employed by National Sea Products for 25 years. In 1983 his net income was $11,000 a year. In 1998 his income from the early retirement program for fish plant workers combined with his income from Canada Pension is $10,000 a year. To make matters worse, along comes a bill from Revenue Canada for $1,080. It makes me think they want to give you enough to eat, but make sure you can’t sleep at night. I am employed at Sears part-time. After 16 years I was laid off and rehired three months later in the Sears Call Centre. In 1991 my income was $11,000 and in 1998 it was $7,000. Talk about going down a ladder!”
In broader terms, the researchers note that each of the six communities studied “has been negatively affected by the collapse of the ground fishery and the restructuring of the fishing industry, restrictions on fishing, and changes in fishing regulations since the early 1990s. These communities have experienced a double blow because of changes in programs such as EI [Employment Insurance] and the re-organization of provincially delivered services in areas like social services and healthcare. Individuals and families in these communities are experiencing serious problems as a result. Yet research participants thought that services, supports, meeting places and other things that might help individuals and families cope, or which could create a stronger sense of community, were in decline.”
Many women told the researchers that economic changes have created “more distrust or jealousy” in communities.
“There has been a loss of individual and community pride,” the report states. “Individuals and families have become increasingly isolated from one another. They said they were affected by the divisions which had developed between neighbors and within families as well as by the general atmosphere in their communities, which in many cases they described as full of tension, despair and hopelessness.”
Lord said she and her team regretted that the study wasn’t broader geographically. “We had very little financing to do this; it really was a volunteer effort,” she said. A core group from CRIAW held workshops to train community women, and these women went out and conducted the interviews. “The interviewers also kept their own journals, and these provided tremendous insight for us as well.”
“Initially, we got a call from the Atlantic Center of Excellence for Women’s Health, who told us that they wanted a study by community groups, not just university-based research. We felt that this was a great opportunity to document what we knew was going on,” Lord said.
What she and her team would like to see is for governmental agencies to take this study forward and use it as a link between policy and health. “So far, the government’s response has been to show some interest and concern,” she said. “It’s difficult, though, to get resources for this kind of work. We’d like to get the DFO [federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans] to step up to the plate and recognize their responsibility in this, or at least to recognize the issue.”
Lord, a sociologist, says she first got involved in the issue when she went to a conference in Newfoundland shortly after the cod moratorium was declared. “I realized then that there were the same kinds of problems back home in Nova Scotia.”