Gender, a key dimension for the future of maritime cultural heritage research: cases from Europe and East Asia

This article focuses on the importance of gender research in the intangible cultural heritage of fisheries (including shellfish and seaweed farming) as a means to better preserve coastal and maritime cultural heritage. Fishing activities are based on knowledge, the “know-how”, accumulated through experience over time and transmitted to new generations. As written sources have tended, historically, to be written by men, fisheries, shellfish and seaweed farming are usually viewed today as male activities from which women are excluded. However, participant observation and qualitative interviewing of fisheries’ cultures show us this is often not the case. Therefore, this article fills a gap by describing two maritime cultural heritage case studies that provide researchers and practitioners with alternative sources of information, such as oral history and qualitative interviewing. Moreover, policies to conserve maritime intangible cultural heritage require a better understanding of gender-differentiated practices as well as of ways of knowledge acquisition and gender inequalities in such heritage.