Stages and strategies in women's careers
Enterprises can be viewed as an unfolding process, a series of constrained choices over time (Barth, 1963, p. 12). During a woman's life course, there are stages and critical moments when she must take decisions with regard to her various statuses which will heavily influence her possibility to succeed in her business. The first moment is when she marries, the next is when she decides to establish her own fie and finally it is when she purchases her own canoe.
Ensuring fish supply through marriage and credit
From being a client dependent on the membership and roof of her mother's or mother's brother's fie, with support of a husband and fish on credit from a standing woman, a small scale entrepreneur seeks strategies to expand in her career. Increased supply is the key to success for a fish processor and trader, and Table 1 illustrates how marriage to a canoe owner dramatically improves her possibilities. A woman who has proved her abilities in fish processing and trade is an attractive marriage partner for a canoe owner; he needs a woman to exchange and distribute fish to the customers. The enterprising wife is also a potential creditor for his canoe company, and she will be capable of taking good care of the children they have in common.
A woman who has accumulated some capital, can also use as a strategy to increase her access to fish supply by providing credit to other canoe companies than her husband's, and receive payment in the form of fish. She can also give credit to women as a strategy to ensure a stable distribution channel for fresh fish when supply is beyond her processing capacity. From debtors, especially if repayment periods are prolonged, a standing woman often receives practical services, such as bringing messages, helping her in carrying or giving her information.
Managing human resources in processing and trade through the fie
However, a precondition to make real profits is to effectively process and distribute fish in large quantities and over long distances. The crucial resource is access to reliable labour and her ability to manage the enterprises. Authority and respect from a woman's dependants is necessary if her material achievements are not going to wither away into everybody's pockets. To manage this without many grown and able children, especially daughters who have been well educated in the fishery activities, is difficult. Over her children she has a natural authority, and the children know that they all work for their common good. A large scale trader with ambitions of becoming a canoe owner must therefore establish her own fie.
Sometimes a woman takes over the head position of the fie of her mother or mother's brother, or she builds the house with her own resources; returns from the fish trade and the pooled resources of her children. The house itself is of course a necessary facility and a sign of wealth, but the crucial issue for a woman who tries to expand her enterprises is who the persons in the house are and what they are able to do. By recruiting and organizing these human resources in the fie well, and profit from the opportunities provided by the new technology, a woman can become very rich. This wealht is undoubtedly one of the direct reasons for why women increasingly have expanded their field of operation from a traditonally female dominated processing and trade, to include the field which earlier was exclusively reserved for men: that of capture fisheries.
One woman in Moree lives in her late mother's house. She has two daughters who have "started their own". She was divorced long ago from their father, and is now married to a canoe owner. She has, however, no children with the present husband. But from him she has obtained a loan to buy a canoe, the money for the net and the outboard motor she had earned herself through fish processing and trade. The labour of her two daughters was not sufficient, and she needed men as crew members on her canoe. What she actually did, was to adopt six children; adolescent girls and boys, she had clear plans for the expansion of her fish business in the coming future. This case is not a usual strategy for women to manage their canoe companies, but it illustrates the importance of the fie for the management of an enterprise when it reaches the dimensions where access to labour becomes such a necessity.
Managing to be a canoe owner
A female canoe owner is particularly vulnerable to misfortunes caused by the crew's dishonesty or incapacities as she cannot go fishing with them, and may not have sufficient knowledge about "her men's" whereabouts. The crew may get a good catch, land and sell it in a different town, come back and tell her that they caught nothing. Thus, when a woman becomes a canoe owner, it is important that she has an experienced adviser, i.e. her canoe-owning husband, and that she has reliable crew members, i.e. her sons, sister's sons or sons-in-law. Now control over men have become important in the management of her enterprise, and her strategy is to recruit men to whom she is related and who are economically dependent on her. The establisment of a fie is therefore essenitial in such a project. Moreover, the cooperation with a canoe-owning husband seems to be a necessity for a woman to become a canoe owner herself. However, once established as owner and administrator of her proper canoe, the dependence upon her husband decrases since her supplies of fish are assured through other means. The future of her marriage will now to a large extent depend on other factors, but it is a fact that women canoe owners often tend to be divorced.
