Women have always played a major role in the family unit growing up in the nurturing side. They were raised by their mother to learn how to care for the family. Traditional roles would be to provide a clean, safe environment while tending to the needs of nourishment and raising the young. Beyond this the mother, daughter and young sons would tend to other roles as well to include gardening, feeding and watering livestock to sustain their livelihood.
In a waterman family the mother and children would clean fish, pick crab meat, shuck oysters and clams to eat and to sell or trade for other needs. Once the children got older, they would help their mother sew sails, make trotlines, hang net and make other gear to support the husband/father who spent his days out on the water catching a bounty to support his family and community, many days were sunup to sundown.
When I was six years old, I started working on the boat with my father fishing crab pots in the early 60s. You did not see women working on the boats. Occasionally you may see an older daughter go out with her father for a day.
In the 70s there was a real trailblazer fishing crab pots on her own boat in Mathews, Virginia named Karen Townsend. She also hung her own gillnets. She has been well documented by VMRC (Virginia Marine Resources Commission) and Urbanna, Virginia author Larry Chowning.
Years back very seldom would you see a woman working on a boat. As mentioned before, daughters working with their father increased. These days increasingly you see women taking on all rolls from deckhand to captain and doing a great job!!! There are now all waterwomen crews working in many areas. They have forged their way into the seafood industry and earned the respect of everyone.
We have a lady entering the seafood industry here locally now named Andria Greene. I am currently helping her search for a boat to purchase, and she is going to enter the blue catfish fishery. She is excited to begin this new adventure and live life salty!!
On February 26,2019 I started a Facebook group named Working Women of the Water. Seeing the increase in their presence I felt as though they needed their own group to receive the recognition they so deserved. Women joined around the coast and internationally. It now has 4.1K members. I needed a tagline for the group and after giving it some thought I came up with “Salty & Sweet”. This is perfect, they work hard on the saltwater breaking a sweat, but just because they are working hard does not mean they lose their femininity either, therefore “Salty & Sweet”!!!