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Dr. Nicole Power

Department of Sociology

The change to the fishery in this province profoundly affected not just industry but individuals. Dr. Nicole Power, the newest faculty member in the Sociology Department, is exploring some of those changes.

The Chapel Arm native completed her BA and MA at Memorial, then received a Rothermere Fellowship to pursue doctoral studies in the U.K. She chose the University of Essex, where, she said, “there was a lot of discussion going on around the crisis in masculinity.”

Dr. Power’s doctoral study focused on Newfoundland men involved in the inshore fishery. “I looked at what the implications of the recent restructuring were for masculinity.”

She explained that this restructuring didn’t ultimately change the gender balance. “Men tend to be privileged by the systems because they were already fish harvesters and already owned the equipment.”

However, with males spending less time at work, there were changes at the household level. Through interviews with couples in the Bonavista and Trinity Bay areas, she enquired into whether male participation in household activities and childrearing had changed. “Both men and women talked in terms of the men ‘helping’ until something else came along. There was a shift in their involvement, but it really wasn’t an ideological shift in terms of responsibility.”

The work led to an ISER post-doctoral contract to write What Do They Call Themselves? Men, Gender and Restructuring in the Newfoundland Fishery (ISER Books, 2005).

Dr. Power also did post-doctoral research with the Centre for Applied Research, in which she began exploring the connections between masculinity, identity and occupational health and safety (OHS). She noted that many factors – the change to fishing crab, a move to larger vessels with state-of-the-art technology, and a focus on formalized safety training, rather than an approach based in experience, has had implications for OHS.

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