Memory of water: women reclaim Venice’s waterways and trades

Between November 2025 and March 2026 journalist Anna Toniolo and photographer Daniela Sala spent weeks in Venice documenting women whose work is tied to the lagoon. Their aim was to capture how women are both preserving local traditions and changing who can occupy the city's most public space: water.

Venice's streets are canals — about 150 navigable waterways that carry people, goods and social life. Historically, those waterways operated under formal rules and informal codes that largely kept women out of visible water roles: navigation, gondoliere, boatbuilding, competitive rowing and similar trades. That pattern is now shifting as women train, qualify and organize to claim those roles.

The reporting and photographs introduce several women and scenes across the lagoon:

• Beatrice, 28, who has worked as a gondolier for one year and is pictured operating a traghetto that crosses the Grand Canal.

• Agnese Tegon, 31, working at a Murano glass furnace alongside maestro Giancarlo Signoretto and aiming to reach master glassmaker status in a physically demanding, male-dominated field.
• Marta Canino, who navigates a motorboat and offers navigation lessons to women.
• The city's only female sandolista and a maestra d'ascia (a woman building gondolas) are included among the craftspeople reshaping traditional trades.

Public events and collective action

Two broader pressures serve as the backdrop for these stories. First, environmental change: rising sea levels and more unpredictable tides are altering the lagoon's balance and the physical conditions of life on the water. Second, tourism-driven change: mass tourism has pushed homes into short-term rentals, shifted local commerce toward visitors, and contributed to a steady decline in residents in the historic centre. Empty spaces left by those who move away are often filled by tourism-related activity.

The project focuses on practical, incremental change rather than dramatic reversals. Women are reclaiming access to boat-based professions by training, obtaining licences, competing in regattas and entering workshops that were traditionally male. The documentation links these individual steps to a quieter social shift: women occupying visible roles on Venice's waterways and working to transfer skills to other women.

Look for changes in the number of licensed women gondoliers over time, more women in boatbuilding apprenticeships, growth in women-led navigation lessons, and whether women's regattas and clubs expand their membership. These indicators will show whether the documented shifts remain isolated or spread into established local institutions.