Fisherwomen Ride the Rough Waves While India’s Blue Economy Blooms

Shaila D’Mello, President of the All Goa Small Scale Responsible Fisheries Union, resides in the Cacra village of Goa. She holds down multiple jobs alongside fishing to sustain her family—a consequence of declining small-scale catch as illegal industrial practices like bull trawling and LED fishing deplete marine resources.

“For small-scale fishers like us, fishing is becoming increasingly challenging. Our livelihoods are at stake,” she says. The feature uses Shaila’s account as an entry point into the examination of women’s place in India’s coastal fisheries. It reports that women make up only 19 percent of the marine fishing labour force, that is, the workforce engaged in fisheries on India’s coasts. However, they constitute 81 percent of the inland fishing workforce, which operates in freshwater ecosystems and employs only 18 percent of all fisherfolk. Thus, their numbers are highly limited in coastal fisheries, which constitute the larger fisheries-related sector in the country. Women are engaged in post-harvest and marketing work but are marginalised in the more profitable marine and maritime sectors, with low representation in tourism, shipping, and seafaring due to limited access to skill and technology. The Blue Economy framework, which seeks to develop the Indian fisheries industry via a science-backed and sustainable approach (Maritime India Vision 2030, Amrit Kaal Vision 2047), largely excludes them from its design. This report notes how ecological degradation in coastal fisheries compounds the women fisherfolks’ struggle with gendered exclusion from policy and profitable work.