The climate crisis is being experienced in highly tangible and devastating ways today through frequently-occurring extreme weather events that are destroying lives and livelihoods. This is particularly true for climate-vulnerable coastal and marine areas. While global leaders discuss these issues within their ivory towers, calibrating mitigation strategies in country-specific emission standards and mitigation strategies, as evidenced in the COP 26 reports, their decisions might have little impact on the immediate issues faced by the artisanal fishers in coastal communities dealing with the crisis at hand. Fishers and fishing communities may have to devise their own immediate and situation-specific responses. In the context of World Fisheries Day on 21st November, as well as the recent launch of the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA 2022), an effective response to the climate crisis would be to recognize and valorize without further delay women’s equal participation in the sector. There is in fact growing evidence to show that fostering women’s equal participation in the fisheries leads to better environmental, social as well as economic outcomes, all imperatives in the present juncture.