When the women of the sea rise, the tides will rise with them to recognise and honour the daughters of the oceans. On November 5 this year, fisherwomen across India and the world will celebrate the first International Fisher Women’s Day (IFWD) — a day not born in the corridors of institutions, but on the sands of Valiyathura, Kerala, amid the voices of working women who mend, dry, sell, and defend fish and life itself.
The idea of IFWD emerged from the India Fisher Women Assembly 2024, a historic gathering that declared November 5 as the day to honour the invisible hands that feed nations and protect the oceans. The call was later taken to the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) General Assembly in Brazil, where it was unanimously adopted. It now stands as a global symbol of recognition — and rebellion.
As fisherwomen say, this day is not about being seen, but about reclaiming what was always theirs.
Anchored in a long tide of struggles
In the long history of people’s struggles, women have always been the conscience of resistance. From the factory floors of early Europe to the beaches of the Indian coast, women have stitched together the labour of survival and the ethics of care. Rosa Luxemburg’s words — “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains” — echo in the voices of fisherwomen today, who refuse to stay still while their waters are fenced, their lives erased, and their rights sold in the name of development.
International Women’s Day, born of the labour and socialist movements of Clara Zetkin and Luxemburg, demanded political equality and an end to exploitation. November 5 extends that lineage from the land to the sea. It reminds us that liberation cannot be confined to borders or industries — that the politics of the ocean, too, must carry the red thread of equality, community, and justice.
As Zetkin had said, “The working women’s question is not an isolated question, but part of the great social question.” The fisherwomen of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have kept that question alive — turning it into a sea of solidarity that stretches from Kanyakumari to Dakar.
Why November 5 matters — and why it began in India
Fisherwomen have always held the coastline together. They wake before dawn to carry fish to market, manage homes through storms and loss, and are the first to rebuild after every cyclone. Yet, their names do not appear in government records. They are still called ‘helpers’ or ‘dependents’, while laws, schemes, and cooperatives continue to be written in the masculine lens.
This erasure, the women declared in Kerala, must end. They demanded recognition not as “wives of fishers,” but as fishers themselves — rightful claimants of the seas, keepers of knowledge, and protectors of coasts.
In doing so, they carried forward the dreams of pioneers such as Thomas Kocherry and Harekrishna Debnath, who had long insisted that the future of fisheries lies not in mechanisation or export figures, but in justice, community control, and the dignity of work. Both leaders believed that the rights of fisherwomen were the moral compass of the movement. Kocherry often said, “When the poor stand up, even the sea must make way.”
The declaration of November 5 thus became a collective act of remembering — of drawing strength from those who built India’s post-colonial fishworker movement and from the women who sustained it quietly all along. This was endorsed by the largest social movement of fishers across the globe, the Word Forum of Fisher Peoples at the General Assembly held in Brazil in the same month of November 2025.
The women of waters and their demands
The call for an International Fisher Women’s Day is inseparable from its politics. Across India’s recently declared more than 11,000-kilometre coastline and its countless rivers and lakes, women are demanding what should never have been denied:
• Recognition as fishers in law and policy, not as dependents.
• Equal rights to access and govern coastal and inland waters, free from corporate intrusion.
• Inclusion in welfare, insurance, and disaster-compensation schemes.
• First-sale and market rights to secure fair prices and independence from exploitative middlemen.
• Representation in fisheries boards and cooperatives.
• Protection of ecosystems from destructive aquaculture, deep-sea mining, and coastal militarisation.
• Legal safeguards from caste and gender-based violence — both within the community and from the state.
These are not demands for special treatment; they are demands for survival, carved from decades of unpaid and unacknowledged work that sustains both the fishing economy and the national food basket.
The ocean remembers
In the last decade, government programmes such as the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) and new policies under the banner of Blue Economy 2.0 have promised prosperity. But for most coastal and inland fishing communities, these schemes have delivered displacement instead.
Behind the numbers and glossy reports lie harbours privatised, commons enclosed, and women’s livelihoods erased. As industrial trawlers deplete fish stocks and aquaculture pollutes backwaters, fisherwomen are left struggling for survival in a development model that excludes them.
The state’s vision of ‘modernisation’ has turned the sea into a commodity. But fisherwomen, who live by its moods and rhythms, remind us that the ocean is not a market to be managed — it is a living commons that sustains cultures, livelihoods, and spiritual traditions.
Ocean feminism and the new tide
From the lagoons of Chilika to the estuaries of Karaikal and the islands of the Sundarbans, women’s collectives are practising what they call ocean feminism — rooted in care, community, and resistance. They see themselves not as victims but as custodians of ‘aqua territories’ — spaces of relationship, knowledge, and survival.
As Harekrishna Debnath, one of India’s earliest fisher leaders, often said, “We don’t fight the sea; we live with it. But we must fight those who sell it.” Today, that fight is global. It connects fisherwomen in India to their sisters in Senegal, Thailand, and Brazil — all confronting the false climate solutions packaged as Blue Transformation, 30×30, and Marine Spatial Planning, which in practice privatise the oceans and displace small-scale fishers.
Through the five-week campaign initiated by WFFP — from November 5 to December 10 — women and men of the fishing world are asserting their right to live with dignity, protect their territories, and resist enclosure in every form.
From recognition to transformation
This International Fisher Women’s Day is not a commemoration; it is a beginning. It reminds us that the ocean too has a memory — of those who built communities along its edge, who fed others before themselves, and who continue to hold the fragile balance between humanity and water.
As Rosa Luxemburg warned, “Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently.” Across India’s coasts and rivers, fisherwomen are thinking — and acting — differently: against caste, patriarchy, and neoliberal enclosures; for rights, justice, and community life.
Their struggle is our collective future. When the tide rises, may it rise with their names on its waves.
Jesu Rethinam is the Global Women Coordinator of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP).
Vijayan MJ is Director, Participatory Action Research Coalition, India (PARCI).
Courtesy: CounterCurrents