The resilience of small-scale fisheries in developed and developing countries has been used to provide lessons to conventional managers regarding ways to transition toward a social-ecological approach to understanding and managing fisheries. We contribute to the understanding of the relationship between management and the resilience of small-scale fisheries in developed countries by looking at these dynamics in the wake of the shock of stock collapse and fisheries closures in two contexts: Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, and northern Norway. We revisit and update previous research on the gendered effects of the collapse and closure of the Newfoundland and Labrador northern cod fishery and the closure of the Norwegian cod fishery in the early 1990s and present new research on young people in fisheries communities in both contexts. We argue that post-closure fishery policy and industry responses that focused on downsizing fisheries through professionalization, the introduction of quotas, and other changes ignored the gendered and intergenerational household basis of small-scale fisheries and its relationship to resilience. Data on ongoing gender inequities within these fisheries and on largely failed recruitment of youth to these fisheries suggest they are currently at a tipping-point that, if not addressed, could lead to their virtual disappearance in the near future.

With fisheries in the Arctic as the area of research, the intent of this project was to do research on three levels of resource management. (1)Individual power – ownership and leadership in fisheries and fishery-related businesses, (2) Structural or Institutional power - influence in the systems and bodies that determine quota regulations and (3) Discursive power - the symbols, public images, assumptions and stereotypes that serve to uphold fisheries as a “male” domain. These are treated comparatively in an international study, involving subprojects in Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and one initiated by the Norwegian Sami Parliament. The Faroe Islands have been included in the comparative part, but not in a separate project due to the timeframe. The studies and the resulting project report include comparative background descriptions of the fisheries and the gender equality situation for each country, and an overview of important decision-making bodies in fisheries management at different levels in the Arctic. In order to study the right and access to and control of resources, three main categories of information have been identified: individual, institutional and discursive power. The report includes information such as the percentage of women participants in, for instance, committees and decision-making bodies in the sector, and at the statistics for women in businesses, as leaders or owners in the sector, and as employees in fish processing companies and the aquaculture sector in the participating countries.