| Using oral histories, this work examines the gender roles and relations between women and men in a small fishing village on the west coast of Florida called Cortez. The gender history of the community begins in the late 1880s, when working class white fisherfolk from North Carolina first migrated to the village, and ends in the 1990s, when a new migration of residents to Florida threatened the occupational community formed by these earlier settlers. The experiences of pioneer Cortez women is compared to that of nineteenth-century women on the western frontier, for west coast Florida in the late 1800s was still a wilderness. While men in the village worked at sea, early women not only contributed to the future viability of their community by bearing large numbers of children, but organized the social, religious, and political institutions as well. Because an analysis based on gender requires scrutiny of male as well as female activities, attention is given to the work ethic and practices inculcated in male fishermen, especially the independence, bravado, and roughneck spirit associated with their occupation. Despite this masculine orientation, there were women in the community who also fished, scalloped, worked at local fish houses, or acted as "shore skippers" for their husband's enterprise. After World War II, women also became the principal wage earners in the community, as they were among the initial workers at Tropicana, Inc. in nearby Bradenton. By the 1990s, local women were also involved in the politics of community displacement, development, drugs, and fishing.; The central thesis of this work is that fishermen's occupational absence places female fisherfolk in a unique position of community creation and control. In addition, the study points out the paradoxical situation of fishermen, who despite their radical individualism, are extremely dependent on women's economic, cultural, and reproductive contributions. This dependence is due not only to male absence, but because fishing is an uncertain economic enterprise based on a fluctuating "share" rather than wage system. The study also examines the ways in which reproductive, cultural, environmental, and technological changes affect women's roles in the fishery. |
