Carola Barría strolls down a dock in Dalcahue, a bustling port city on the island of Chiloé, and chats with the grizzled fishing crews who’ve just hauled shellfish into the harbor on wooden boats. She listens to a litany of problems and racks her brain for solutions, clearly comfortable with the kind of gruff men who are accustomed to a fraternal life at sea.
Barría is the granddaughter, daughter, and sister of fishers—and none of them, she says, wanted her to follow in their footsteps. But, she adds, she never cared much about what they thought. Like many women, the 41-year-old helped support her family by collecting shellfish and seaweed from the shore. But at the same time, she says, she was secretly studying— learning what she needed to know to rise through the ranks to become the secretary of both the local and regional fishing syndicates. More recently, she helped establish the National Corporation of Women in Artisanal Fisheries.
“When someone closes their eyes and thinks about fishing, they always visualize a man,” Barría says, returning to her spare office overlooking the harbor and its shuffling ferries. “That’s why we have this movement now. It’s so that women know they have rights too, and that it’s important for them to express their needs because being secondary actors, we’re never going to change anything.”
Barría played a key role in pushing through a 2021 national law that added gender equity to fishing policy. The law creates gender quotas in regulatory bodies and seeks to formalize formerly unrecognized (and traditionally female) roles that precede and follow the actual catching of fish—activities like smoking seafood products and baiting nets for fishing crews. Together, these changes let female workers appear on work registers and apply for grants to improve their businesses.
“Now,” Barría says, “women are absolutely empowered.”
WWF sees gender equity as a fundamental element of sustainable development and effective conservation, which is why the organization helped build momentum for the new gender equity law and supports leaders like Barría.
“Women have been made invisible in this sector for years, but they’ve always been a part of the story,” says Denisse Mardones, conservation communications coordinator at WWF-Chile, who joins Barría at the seafront near her office. “Now begins the whole process of implementing this law—and making sure we help these women gain greater participation in the decision-making about, and management of, artisanal fishing and small-scale aquaculture work. We need to secure financing for women’s enterprises and promote recognition of the health impacts of this work; we need to accomplish the vision of the law that recognizes the many roles women play in fisheries and aquaculture here.”
Barría tells Mardones she’s busy as ever organizing and training other female leaders across Chiloé to continue the fight for greater equity. “At the beginning, many husbands would tell their wives, ‘You need to be careful with her,’ because I’m breaking old traditions,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “But the truth is, we simply feel the freedom now to say the things we couldn’t before.”
The women she works with, including the four profiled here, have told her that they never felt important until they discovered the power of speaking up. “That,” she adds, “is what makes me most proud.”