Bristol Bay set netting used to be dominated by women. When the limited entry permit system started in the 70s, it had the highest rates of women permit holders in the state – by a landslide.
One woman who’s been fishing since even before limited entry is June Ingram. Ingram has fished the same family set net site in Ekuk for over 60 years after her grandfather first came to Bristol Bay as a winter watchman for a cannery.
“He came to Ekuk in 1939 and staked this property, this site,” she said.
Even though it was her grandfather who first staked the site, Ingram says, he was the odd one out at the time.
“He said there were all women on the beach, and that he was the first man!” she said.
Ingram says set netting sites in Bristol Bay have traditionally been operated by women, which allowed them to multitask — fishing both commercially and for their families.
“The reason why women stayed on the shore was to also subsist.,” she said. “Not only put up fish, smoked fish, but also to pick the greens and herbs and berries as the seasons came along.”
When limited entry permits were first issued in the mid 70s, 57 percent of set net permits were allocated to women.
Amy Burnett Cross is a postdoctoral fellow in economics at the University of Alaska Anchorage, researching women’s participation in the labor force. She thinks one federal regulation from 1937 may have helped women hold the majority of permits at the time. The rule required two years of residency in Bristol Bay to participate in the set net fishery. She says this regulation protected local access rights for set net sites.
But the number of women set netters in Bristol Bay is declining. Currently, just 34 percent of Bristol Bay permits belong to women. Cross has been studying why the decline is happening, even when women’s participation in many other industries has increased.
“The piece we are interested in as economists is to think more broadly about why we're seeing something so different in the trend than we're seeing in almost every other high-wage occupation in the economy,” said Cross.
Cross’s research is still underway, but she has two primary hypotheses:
Her first idea is that as more high-paying economic opportunities open up for women elsewhere, they become more likely to leave the fishery.
“As the economy develops within Bristol Bay and as local women move to Anchorage and other parts of Alaska, they have access to opportunities in jobs where they're earning higher wages or their employer is not allowing them to come back and fish during fishing season,” said Cross. “That kind of pull away from the fishery is accelerating women's decline.”
The other factor she’s exploring is the decline of shore-based buyers in Bristol Bay.
“If they no longer have someone to sell fish to on the shore, then they're forced to now deliver on a tender and or find another buyer,” she said.
Cross says a lot of women set netters are also caregiving while fishing, and don’t have the flexibility to leave their site.
June Ingram was part of that – her first summer of set netting in Ekuk with her mother was when she was 10 years old.
“My mother was Yupik, and they didn't have jobs or child care when I was growing up,” she said. “Mama was always there, Daddy was there too, but he would be hunting and providing for us during the winter, but Mama was always there, even during the summer.”
For June Ingram in Ekuk, sharing the set net tradition with her family is at the core of her fishing.
“We enjoy life,” said Ingram. “We show our children, we bring them closer together–our families.”
According to Cross, women, like Ingram, retain Bristol Bay set net permits for much longer than men, often for 30 to 40 years, even as markets change. Those permits often are then given or sold to family members and descendants.
For the many Alaskans concerned about the migration of permits to out-of-state hands, Cross says it’s vital to examine each fishery individually, and to look at the specific pressures women in a fishery face, including Bristol Bay set netters.
Get in touch with the author at jessie@kdlg.org
