This report puts gender equality in natural resource management on the circumpolar agenda as part of the work of the Sustainable Development Working Group of the Arctic Council. In 2002, the Taking Wing conference on gender equality and women in the Arctic was held in Finland, with a focus on the link between gender equality and natural resource management for sustainable development. Norway followed up this conference and has contributed by putting gender equality questions on the agenda
of the Arctic Council. The Northern Feminist University had participated in the Taking Wing conference at the invitation of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and after the conference developed a project proposal for the “Women’s participation in decision-making processes in Arctic Fisheries Resource Management” project. Project partners from the Arctic Council nation states and permanent participants were invited to participate. Fisheries represent a traditional way of life and are of great economic and cultural importance to coastal populations in the Arctic, indigenous and non-indigenous Northern inhabitants. Women are part of these coastal settlements; fisheries resource management and regulatory measures affect their lives, yet they are not accorded
stakeholder status or participatory rights in regulatory bodies. This project has become a joint effort, with participants from Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes, Norway
and Sweden both in the work group and in the International Steering Committee. The Sámediggi, the Sámi Parliament in Norway, followed up on the original recommendation by commissioning a report on the gender equality aspect of their fisheries policy. A summary of this report is included as a separate chapter in the report. The report is based on statistics and fieldwork studies in the participating countries, and each national chapter contains both statistics on the fisheries in the country, a fieldwork report and in several cases, the author’s recommendations. In addition, the national project leaders have agreed on a set of recommendations to national authorities and to the industry, and the International Steering Committee has agreed to support these recommendations.