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To the south of Valencia (Spain), in the middle of Lake Albufera, an island has been inhabited for eight centuries by fishermen who make up the community of the El Palmar fishermen. This community is characterised by its customary rules excluding women from having access to the fishing rights known as the redoli. Though this is presented as a work-based gender discrimination, it is in reality more of a discrimination that takes the form of a privatisation of the rights connected to the property of a legal asset. Five women, all of them fishermen’s daughters, have called into question these centuries-old patriarchal rules before courts which, in turn, have called upon international law to justify their rulings.