This research draws on a feminist framework and gender-based participatory paradigm in Indigenous Water Management. The mixed methodology and this conceptual framework assisted with an in-depth understanding of indigenous water management and practices in the villages in Ondo, and with an overall understanding of equitable gender and indigenous approaches. Scholars are being challenged more than ever with dealing more wholly with the complex ways that social power, identity and subject construction relate to the regulation of water resources management and practices. Hagg and Emmett (2003) have described the broad range of everyday practices of
‘compensation’ in Delhi’s water management, that residents utilise to access water, which involves among others, staying away from work to fetch water. According to Batra (2004) and Coles and Wallace (2005), water is directly connected with gender, class and religious identities and is enmeshed in rival understandings of the rural-urban environment and the state. Hence,
‘power, rights, and citizenship’ in the community are shaped due to the varying consequences of water practices (Swyngedouw, Kaika and Castro 2002). While ‘political ecological’ investigation has given more consideration to the socio-environmental processes that produce water inequality in the various communities, research has been more directed towards analysing the construction of class and the distributional extents of inequality on a community rather than considering how several ‘social differences are (re)shaped’ in and through everyday water practices and
A ‘Feminist Political Ecology’ framework, like the feminist framework, through gender, class and other social power relations and by re-directing attention to the ways everyday approaches are produced, has shown that it is essentially important and useful in “analysing daily proportions of resource inequality” (Mehta 1996, 180-202). I argue that both these frameworks can enable a reconceptualisation of water inequality to more fully include inequalities associated with processes of social and spatial differentiation and their consequences for everyday life in the community through probing the embodied consequences of water and indigenous management practices. Feminist approaches to water management are mainly useful for understanding the production of, and interconnections between scales of analysis, precisely revealing how everyday practice is tied to the construction of scales such as the body, families and community at large. A thoughtful consideration of the ways in which gendered and indigenous water management practices are productive of certain social differences interrupts a framework in which distributional differences and ‘access and control’ become the only means of appreciating how water practices are linked with power and inequality (see Mohanty 2003, 225). Exploring the rich tradition of feminist analyses, Cameron and Gibson-Graham (2003, 145-158), have examined how life experiences, approaches of informal practices, the “economies and micro politics observed daily, are product of, and produced through gendered ideologies”’, structural power relations and processes of both rural and global change. Specifically, Nagar et al. (2002 257-284) argue that, in order to reveal how women’s lives and gender are shaped by larger economic forces, a more “holistic research into the informal spaces” and practices of globalisation, including family relations, and the feminisation of spaces and labour within communities, is required. This kind of analysis would allow us to connect “transnational political and economic structures and ideologies of capitalism to everyday life and local gendered contexts and ideologies” (Mohanty 2003, 225). A feminist framework focuses on shifting regimes of gendered access, control and local management of water among rural settlers at the local family level and
communities that, with the help of more research, could assist us to probe into daily environmental practices in the context of production of inequality and differences. However, the procedures for social differentiation, enlightening the complex ramifications of water and its rural management strategies, have been specifically analysed through recent feminist contributions by studying the importance of water in everyday practices for shaping gender ideologies (O’Reilly and Richa, 2010; Hernandez, Escartin and van Dick 2014; Hersch-Martinez 2004; Laurie, 2005).
Of course, feminism is not to be viewed with a narrow perspective of women gender, instead it is now understood as not only an issue affecting only women, but also men (see also Ellis, 2000;
Matiza, 1994; Elmhirst and Resurreccion 2008). Since women and men exhibit mutual but non- exclusive socially and culturally-determined differences in behaviour, roles and responsibilities on gender concerns imply that all decisions regarding planning, design, location, operation and maintenance, management and assessment of water are based upon recognition of their differences (see van Wijk, 1998; GWDR 2003). The redefinition of the policy framework from a
‘beneficiary-orientated approach’ to one based on ‘stakeholder participation’ was as a result of the importance and the need for equity, efficiency and effectiveness. A wider view of gender dimensions with respect to the perspective of ‘women as beneficiaries’ was first transformed to
“women’s accentuated involvement in operation and maintenance” (van Wijk 1998; Narayan 1995), and thereafter women’s perspective in participation has been expanded to the domain of water resources management as a whole, which also includes a broader opinion on gender. This led to the Ministerial Declaration at the International Conference on Freshwater (Bonn, 2001):
The role of both women and men in the sustainable use of water resources should be such that it benefits and involves everyone, with men and women having an equal voice in management. This participatory approach would allow the role of women in water-related needs to be reinforced and their participation broadened in water resources management.
3.13.1 Feminist Framework
A feminist framework examines inequalities in gender-related issues. It uses an intersectionality approach which recognises the discrimination and violations of human rights women experience, not only on the basis of their gender but also from other power relations. According to McCall (2005, 1771-1800), intersectionality is a methodology of studying “the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relationships and subject formations”. As one of the theoretical tools it also assisted me to better analyse and understand the circumstances surrounding the exclusion of women from community water management and the discrimination they experience when it comes to water management beyond the home. Ritzer (2007, 204) maintains that an example of intersectionality theory might be “the view that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity”.
During my study, it was observed that women were sidelined, especially poor women, from every developmental activity in the rural communities which is a form of oppression. Hence, intersectionality helped me to improve inclusivity and diversity. Not only does intersectionality reveal multiple identities, but prominently it also reveals the different types of discrimination and the impact they have on different contexts. In addition, Weedon (1997) has exposed the discursive strategies used by many of the men in the study, in their quest to sustain male hegemony. The study also uses a hegemonic masculinity concept which serves as an analytical tool for classifying those attitudes and practices among men that perpetuate gender inequality which involves men’s supremacy over women (Delgado and Zwarteveen 2007). Hegemonic masculinity “embodies the currently most honoured way of being a man, it requires all other men to position themselves in relation to it, and it ideologically legitimates the subordination of women” (503-511). In societies like the one among the rural settlers in Ondo, where men’s contributions are more valued and recognised than those of women who are more actively involved in water management, men are seen and are more ‘positioned to represent’, the water-related interests and needs of the household
at the level of the rural community (Boelens and Zwarteveen 2002). These ideas are partly and often implicitly based on a unitary model of the household, and a representative division of the world into two clearly delineated spheres of activity: the public and the private. Additionally, women are often detached from their individual experiences and the experiences endorsed by the culture, which places masculine viewpoints and arrangements high above women’s viewpoints in community developments – a widespread practice across various villages in Ondo. Thus, women’s viewpoints tend to be silenced or marginalised to the point of being discredited or considered invalid. However, Sanday’s study of the Indonesian Minangkabau (2002) revealed that in societies considered to be matriarchies, women and men tend to work cooperatively rather than competitively regardless of whether a job is considered feminine.
Recent feminist contributions to the study of water management specifically analyse the importance of everyday practices in ‘shaping gender ideologies’ and processes of social differentiation (Nightingale 2011, 2). Women’s presence in water governance through representation and participation in local decision making relates to women’s strategic gender needs. In rural settlements like in the study sites, there is a discrepancy between women’s rural water needs and the management of indigenous practices, because of women’s underrepresentation in the public domain where strategic decisions are made. The reproductive roles of women at the level of the household make local water a practical gender need for them.
Hence, this has led to women’s practical gender needs, like domestic water, being inefficiently considered. These needs are regarded as women’s issues that belong to the private domain and are not of community interest. Therefore, adopting the Rao and Kelleher (2005, 57-69) model called
‘What are we trying to change’ so as to analyse the formal and informal structures affecting women’s participation and performance in the local decision-making spaces and rural water management would stress the need for shifting the rules of the game in the inequitable social
Although the formal structures provide women with opportunities to participate in decision making, the informal structures that govern women’s actual access and performance (Kabeer 2005) do not, which is the prevailing structure in the rural settlements (Sokile, Mwaruvanda and van Koppen 2005).
3.13.2 The Gender-Based Participatory Paradigm
Blackburn et al. (2000) emphasised that participation can conceptualised as representative of partnership and ownership, which is a ‘bottom-up’ (see Cornwall, 2002) approach involving people at different levels, ensuring that decisions are soundly made and based on shared knowledge. Although these levels and perspectives on communal participation have been differently constructed (see Cornwall and Gaventa 2001, 127), there are three levels highly relevant to this study. First is consultation, where “administrative bodies consult community members to learn from their knowledge, perceptions, experiences and ideas and ways of livelihood in gender relation[s] and water management among rural settlers”. At the second level is participation in the “development and implementation of plans and programs” where rural community members participate actively by discussing issues and contributing to the solutions of these issues. At the third level, which is also the highest for ‘active participation’, both men and women are involved in decision making and become partly responsible for the outcomes of these decisions. However, in the context of local governance, this implies interaction among participants and stakeholders in determining their development agenda and in managing resources to implement the delivery of potable water among households, which is their development priority. It includes a “bottom-up process built upon a strategy that stresses people’s empowerment and participation, gender equality, legitimacy, transparency, accountability and effectiveness” (see Evertzen 2001). The new institutional structures introduced under gender- equity based participatory models of local governance seek to balance out the gender inequalities by presenting a platform where women can be organised alongside men and be allowed to express
their opinions as well as contribute effectively in decision-making processes. With respect to the rural water management, women’s participation seeks to correct inequalities perceived in terms of access to water resources and benefits from rural water development projects as well as the exercising of decision-making powers with respect to the management of these resources (UNDP 2003; GWA 2003a). To translate the ethics of enhancing stakeholders’ participation, especially that of women in local water governance processes, new institutional spaces have been created such as through decentralisation. These institutions may be interpreted as consisting of new sets of rules that structure the relationship between the stakeholders from rural communities and the government by determining their range of actions with respect to issues in rural level water management (see UNDP 2003).