The newly-released document ‘ICSF’s Journey with Women in Fisheries’ marks a milestone not only in the history of the International Collective in Support of Fisheries (ICSF), an organization that has consistently supported, if not pioneered, work on issues of gender in the fisheries but also in the history of the small-scale fisheries sector as a whole, whose narrative has been made richer and more inclusive on account of it. The document embodies a feminist outlook not just in terms of its content but also in the way it was written—as a collective process with inputs from a large number of members of ICSF who participated actively in the ICSF-Women in Fisheries (WIF) programme and collectively pooled their thoughts and ideas on the basis of their long years of experience in the field. Co-authored by Nalini Nayak from India, Cornelie Quist from The Netherlands, Maria Cristina Maneschy and Naina Perri from Brazil, and Jackie Sunde from South Africa, the document at one level is a fascinating, regional-specific account of women’s struggles in the fisheries across the world. At another, it reveals how working together enabled these and other women in the ICSF-WIF programme to forge bonds of solidarity that were deeply empowering.

Download