Linking Gender and Water - From Victimhood to Agency

We can observe three main tenets of ecofeminist thought:

• Women have an innate and natural relationship with nature, and thus are better suited to lead natural resource management efforts
• Ideologies that justify gender inequalities are also those beliefs that sanction the exploitation and degradation of the environment (env degradation=women's subordination)
• Anthropomorphizing of the environment as 'mother nature' or 'mother earth'

However, many problems are associated with this branch of thought. For example, the goddess/spirituality of equating women has been exposed as highly problematic, the imagined homogeneity in 'women' and their special relationship with nature has been unable to produce a body of reliable evidence, seeing women as undifferentiated 'victims' has been opposed by post-modern feminists. Above all, a rich literature examining 'livelihood strategies' of women and men in poor communities showed that w women as well as men degrade their environments when in need. Melissa Leach's 1992 paper gives many of these critiques.

In water sector, a stereotypical image that emerges from this perspective is that of a group of women walking long distances to gather water on their heads, wearing colourful sarees, in order to maintain the daily subsistence of their families. Such images render invisible the large number of urban or middle class women living in developing countries, and unintentionally romanticise the rigors of women's work. A powerful 'myth' is created in the policy discourse (Cornwall, 2007) - an image that abounds in past and present policy documents. This image is often sensationalised to emphasise women's suffering and victimhood, and often form the main plank of many policy interventions.

Therefore, feminists gradually realised that it is the reallocation of power and strategic resources that can offer both women and relatively less powerful men choices that can be linked to the sustainability of the planet. Women draw water for household use, transport it home, store it until it is used, and use it for cooking, cleaning, washing and watering household animals. Women negotiate with their neighbours for access to water supply, evaluate water sources, analyse supply patters, lobby relevant authorities, and launch protests when water availability decreases. Yet, in some parts of the world, women spend up to 6-8 hours a day just for collecting water for their families. Many infectious diseases are associated with poor water quality. Women bear also the primary burden of caring for the sick in most societies.

These evidences have led to a dominance of the Water and Sanitation sector - it has oftenb assumed the predominant area where women's concerns are to be taken care of. Khosla (2003) thinks that this attention probably reflects the technocentric ideologies that dominated in the past and continues to form the backdrop of developmental interventions in the public health area, and that the reasons and evidences are located in a formal and positivist domain where medical data can prove the absence of health amongst women as compared to men. For those women without access to clean, safe and adequate drinking water, who are always in contact with polluted waters, who are affected by the lack of sanitation, such a critique might appear as unrealistic. Yet, the popularity of this approach continues to overshadow women's productive roles, by enhancing the representation of women as mothers, wives and daughters belonging only to home, essentially as non-productive citizens. Some practitioners with grassroots experience see WatSan as an 'entry point' in engendering water management sector and development agencies, but Andrea Cornwall (2007) believes that the participation of women in WatSan may not result in their empowerment or improve gender equality.

Gender, Water and Ecofeminism

Streams of Thought - Thinking about Gender

Gender Mainstreaming in IWRM (Integrated Water Resource Management)

Feminist Thoughts

Back to Main: Gender and Water Definition and Mission