Are women who fish still fishermen?

On reading an article about lobster fishermen in Atlantic Canada, I was a little taken aback by the passing assertion that the preferred term for both men and women in the  fishing industry is in fact ... "fishermen".

Not that this is such a revolutionary idea, and not that there are actually that many women in the fishing industry anyway. But it's certainly something I had never thought about. And apparently it's true.

If we're being politically correct, we say "humanity" instead of "mankind", "staff" for "manpower", "chair" for "chairman", and "firefighter" for 'fireman". But we still say "fisherman", mainly because there just aren't any good or obvious substitutes. 

"Fish harvester" is a bit of an awkward mouthful, even if Fisheries and Oceans Canada has officially adopted it. And "fisher" is a forest-dwelling carnivorous mammal found in the wilds of Canada, and anyway sounds just weird except in the biblical phrase "fisher of men". "Fish industry worker"? I said GOOD substitutes. "Fishwives"? Don't go there!

And, anyway, as it turns out, if you ask any female person who fishes on either coast - and people have done just that - they will respond, to a man [sic], that they prefer to be called "fishermen", thank you very much. In fact they take strong exception to any attempts at such political correctness. These are not bleeding-heart liberals or holier-than-thou intellectuals.

So, until the female fishermen themselves change their minds, we are probably stuck with "fisherman". Which begs the question:  has anyone asked female board chairs what they would like to be called?