India: Maglin Peter

Maglin judiciously balanced her fieldwork with acute intellectual perceptions of the multiple contradictions in society, such as gender, ecology, community, and class.

— Maglin Peter

Maglin Peter (born 1970) has been deeply involved with issues faced by women fish vendors. She has managed to organize the strength of the fish vendors and elicit from them a creative and organized response against discrimination and violence. Maglin, who hails from the same community, understands the importance of connecting these movements with larger women's movements, environmental groups, trade unions, and human rights forums.

Maglin Peter has been actively involved with the fishworkers' movement in the state for close to two decades now, with her focus on women in the community. Maglin initiated, and continues to manage, the women's self-help group Sramasakthi. She is also involved with networks of women's groups like Sthree Vedi and the Self-Employed Women's Association. Maglin is also the program manager for Neeraksha, a women's cultural forum. She is intricately involved with issues faced by the women fish vendors, such as excess tax collection, excess loading charges, street vending and harassment, sexual harassment, working conditions in the prawn-peeling sheds, harbor access by the women vendors, goondaism, family-related issues, and off-season welfare. Also important is alternate employment generation for women displaced in the fisheries sector due to resource depletion. Maglin has, over the years, organized the strength of the fish vendors, and elicited a creative and collective response to discrimination and violence. The transportation facilities that are now available to fish vendors are proof of this assertion of identity and dignity. The fishworkers also have access to women's self-help groups and microcredit facilities. For over a decade, Maglin has been organizing small groups in the villages and getting them to network. She also realizes the importance of interlinking these groups with the larger women's movements, environmental groups, trade unions, and human rights forums. Maglin has managed to do so much so young despite being burdened thrice over: by being from the fishing community, by being a woman from that community, and by being in a third world nation where fishing is considered menial.

Sramasakthi National Fishworkers Forum (NFF) Kerala Swathanthra Malsyathozhilali Federation (KSMF)