Understanding the women and water relationship

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Understanding the women and water relationship

• Seema Kulkarni
• SOPPECOM, Pune, India

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• Is water a womens question?
• Why is it so?

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Why women and water

• Water is a crucial means of production and source
  of life
• All socially disadvantaged groups therefore need
  to have access to means of production
• Equal citizens argument
• Womens presence in the water related work is high

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Gender Analysis- An exercise

• Analysis of activities around water who does
  what?
• Farming, Domestic, Other paid jobs, politics
• Analysis of water resources who owns what?
• Access, ownership Control the power to decide
  whether and how a resource is used
• Analysis of benefits and incentives
• who controls/has access to the benefits outputs
  of production
• Analysis of who decides the rules- power
  structures

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Women and water- relationship- special one

• Access/control
• Activities
• Rule making process
• benefits

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Right to Water

• Water entitlements
• Water technology and infrastructure and
• Voice or decision making in the water related
  institutions are mostly vested in men (some)

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Water knowledge

• Mostly technocentric where infrastructure and its
  management are seen as central
• Womens water related work is invisible in the
  current water paradigm
• Women, dalits, gender relations or equity in
  general do not feature as part of the core
  debates of water thinking

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Tracing history- key trends

• Women as victims of degradation of nature and
  water scarcity
• Women as privileged knowers
• Women as solutions to the problem
• Theoretical underpinnings in the ecofeminist
  thinking- essentialist and material basis
• Feminist environmentalism and feminist political
  ecology- dynamic relationship of women with
  nature and women as diverse

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Tracing history .

• The 80s were characterized by emerging advocacy
  in womens leadership in environmental action.
• Emphasis on special relationship with nature
• This had a tremendous impact in setting
  development agendas. Women were seen as
  privileged knowers and therefore the solution to
  the problem rather than merely victims.

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Ecofeminism

• Both these were informed by the varying trends in
  the ecofeminist thinking
• close connection between women and nature based
  on a shared history of oppression by patriarchal
  institutions and dominant western culture as well
  as positive identification by women with nature.
  Ecofeminist thinking had various strands within
  it-essentialist, ideological and material basis
  for domination of women and nature

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How are women visualised

• Women first seen as the victims affected by the
  environmental crisis
• Then seen as the solution because of their
  natural roles as care takers and nurturers

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How it translated into programmes

• Because women are the victims and because they
  are also the privileged knowers they need to be
  integrated into environmental regeneration
  programmes- participation leads to efficiency
• Soil building planting trees, afforestation
  programmes, nurseries, energy efficient stoves
  community water management projects increased
  burden on womens work without challenging
  existing division of Labour

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Dominant assumptionsmale and female sector

• Women are home makers, nurturers and carers of
  natural resources and hence they should be seen
  in those very roles in the water sector.
• Womens domain therefore remains that of domestic
  water sector- collecting and using that water for
  the welfare of the family.
• Mens domain is seen in the productive sphere or
  the irrigation sector. This is considered as a
  natural extension of their work of value addition
  and surplus generation.

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Approaches for gender water advocacy

• Welfare
• Instrumentalist
• efficiency

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Emerging Critiques

• The 90s saw a lot of critiques of these
  ecofeminist and WED approaches- older concerns of
  womens relationship with nature have now been
  recast in terms of their property rights

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Feminist Environmentalism

• Feminist environmentalism emphasized the material
  aspects of gender-environment relationships.
  Interests in particular resources and ecological
  processes are shaped by the roles and
  responsibilities that men and women are engaged
  in on a daily basis-(BinaAgarwal)

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Feminist Political ecology

• Feminist political ecology draws on works from
  political ecology and from various lessons in the
  gender and environment debates.
• It draws attention to questions of gendered
  knowledge, access and control over resources and
  the engagement between local struggles and global
  issues.(Rochleau et al)

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What did they highlight?

• Womens relationship with the environment
  emerging from the social context of dynamic
  gender relations challenging the notion of a
  natural affinity
• They unpacked women as a homogenous category-
  relationships with nature differ for different
  categories of women

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What did they highlight?

• Shifting of focus from roles to relationships
  these critiques pointed out relations of tenure
  and property , and control over labour resources
  decisions shape peoples environmental interests
  and opportunities
• Both these critiques highlighted the property
  relations and the need to look at informal
  practices and arrangements in property that
  underlie the formal arrangements.

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What did they highlight?

• They also challenged the notion that womens
  participation is equivalent to benefit for women.
  Saving the environment can become an additional
  burden for women thereby reinforcing regressive
  gender roles or not challenging existing gender
  roles
• They highlighted the need for progressive or
  enhanced gender equity

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New approaches

• Equity and empowerment

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Where do we go from here

• What will our goals be?
• How will we achieve them (different approaches
  equity, welfare, efficiency)
• What are our major constraints in doing so
  (gender intersects with caste, class other social
  differences- so can we build shared interests?)

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Way forward

• Assess the status of womens access to water and
  decision making across diverse social groups-
  GEG-Levels of contestation across domains
• calls for a restructuring of the water sector on
  sustainable, equitable and democratic lines