Your search found 5 records
1 Leder, S.; Sugden, F.; Raut, Manita; Ray, D.; Saikia, P. 2019. Ambivalences of collective farming: feminist political ecologies from eastern India and Nepal. International Journal of the Commons, 13(1):105-129. (Special issue: Feminist Political Ecologies of the Commons and Commoning) [doi: https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.917]
Collective farming ; Collective action ; Resource management ; Gender relations ; Women ; Political ecology ; Tenant farmers ; Land fragmentation ; Land management ; Commons ; Water management ; Dry season ; Social aspects ; Labour ; Case studies ; Villages / India / Nepal / Eastern Gangetic Plains / West Bengal / Madhubani / Cooch Behar / Alipurduar / Saptari
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H049381)
https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/articles/10.18352/ijc.917/galley/919/download/
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H049381.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H049381.pdf
(0.60 MB) (616 KB)
Collective farming has been suggested as a potentially useful approach for reducing inequality and transforming peasant agriculture. In collectives, farmers pool land, labor, irrigation infrastructure, agricultural inputs and harvest to overcome resource constraints and to increase their bargaining power. Employing a feminist political ecology lens, we reflect on the extent to which collective farming enables marginalized groups to engage in smallholder agriculture. We examine the establishment of 18 farmer collectives by an action research project in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, a region characterised by fragmented and small landholdings and a high rate of marginalised and landless farmers. We analyze ambivalances of collective farming practices with regard to (1) social relations across scales, (2) intersectionality and (3) emotional attachment. Our results in Saptari/ Eastern Terai in Nepal, Madhubani/Bihar, and Cooch Behar/West Bengal in India demonstrate how intra-household, group and community relations and emotional attachments to the family and neighbors mediate the redistribution of labor, land, produce and capital. We find that unequal gender relations, intersected by class, age, ethnicity and caste, are reproduced in collective action, land tenure and water management, and argue that a critical feminist perspective can support a more reflective and relational understanding of collective farming processes. Our analysis demonstrates that feminist political ecology can complement commons studies by providing meaningful insights on ambivalences around approaches such as collective farming.
2 Leder, S.; Shrestha, Gitta; Das, D. 2019. Transformative engagements with gender relations in agriculture and water governance. New Angle: Nepal Journal of Social Science and Public Policy, 5(1):128-158. (Special issue: Water Security and Inclusive Water Governance in the Himalayas)
Gender relations ; Agriculture ; Water governance ; Participatory approaches ; Participatory research ; Gender training ; Community involvement ; Women farmers ; Labour ; Water resources ; Water management ; Villages ; Social aspects / Nepal / India / Eastern Tarai / Bihar / West Bengal
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H049737)
http://www.nepalpolicynet.com/new/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/7_Leder-et-al-2019.pdf#page=4
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H049737.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H049737.pdf
(4.15 MB) (4.15 MB)
Despite frequent calls for transformative approaches for engaging in agrarian change and water governance, we observe little change in everyday development and research praxis. Empirical studies on transformative engagements with gender relations among smallscale or tenant farmers and water user groups are particularly rare. We explore transformative engagements through an approach based on critical pedagogy (Freire, 1996) and transformative practice (Leder, 2018). We examine opportunities to promote empathy and critical consciousness on gender norms, roles and relations in agriculture and resource management. We developed and piloted an innovative “Participatory Gender Training for Community Groups” as part of two internationally funded water security projects. The training consists of three activities and three discussions to reflect on gender roles in families, communities and agriculture, to discuss the gendered division of labour and changing gender relations over time and space, and to create empathy and resolve conflicts through a bargaining role play with switched genders. The approach was implemented in twelve villages across four districts in Nepal and India (Bihar, West Bengal). Our results show how the training methods can provide an open space to discuss local gender roles within households, agriculture and natural resource management. Discussing own gender norms promotes critical consciousness that gender norms are socially constructed and change with age, class, caste and material and structural constraints such as limited access to water and land. The activities stimulated enthusiasm and inspiration to reflect on possible change towards more equal labor division and empathy towards those with weaker bargaining power. Facilitators have the most important role in transformative engagements and need to be trained to reinterpret training principles in local contexts, and to apply facilitation skills to focus on transforming rather than reproducing gender norms. We argue that the gender training methods can initiate transformative practice with the gender-water-agriculture nexus by raising critical consciousness of farmers, community mobilisers, and project staff on possibilities of social change “in situ”.
3 Leder, S.; Shrestha, Gitta; Upadhyaya, R.; Adhikari, Y. 2022. COVID-19, gender, and small-scale farming in Nepal. In Castellanos, P.; Sachs, C. E.; Tickamyer, A. R. (Eds.). Gender, food and COVID-19: global stories of harm and hope. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge. pp.3-12. (Routledge Focus on Environment and Sustainability) [doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003198277-2]
COVID-19 ; Gender ; Small-scale farming ; Women farmers ; Smallholders ; Women's organizations ; Social inclusion ; Awareness-raising ; Food security ; State intervention ; Relief / Nepal
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H050956)
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003198277-2/covid-19-gender-small-scale-farming-nepal-stephanie-leder-gitta-shrestha-rachana-upadhyaya-yuvika-adhikari
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H050956.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H050956.pdf
(10.90 MB) (10.9 MB)
4 Buisson, Marie-Charlotte; Clement, F.; Leder, S.. 2022. Women’s empowerment and the will to change: evidence from Nepal. Journal of Rural Studies, 94:128-139. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2022.06.005]
Women's empowerment ; Gender ; Social consciousness ; Leadership ; Political aspects ; Indicators ; Agriculture ; Households ; Decision making ; Villages / Nepal
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H051236)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743016722001498/pdfft?md5=d8010caebe53df6079c705ea5234f45d&pid=1-s2.0-S0743016722001498-main.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H051236.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H051236.pdf
(0.57 MB) (587 KB)
A static and apolitical framing of women’s empowerment has dominated the development sector. In contrast, we assess the pertinence of considering a new variable, the will to change, to reintroduce dynamic and political processes into the way empowerment is framed and measured. This article uses a household survey based on the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) and qualitative data collected in Nepal to analyze how critical consciousness influences women’s will to change the status quo and the role of visible agency, social structures, and individual determinants in those processes. A circular process emerges: women with higher visible agency and higher critical consciousness are more willing to gain agency in some, but not all, of the WEAI empowerment domains. This analysis advances current conceptualizations of empowerment processes: the will to change offers valuable insights into the dynamic, relational and political nature of women’s empowerment. These findings support the design of development programs aiming at increasing visible agency and raising gender critical consciousness and argue for improving the internal validity of women’s empowerment measurement tools.
5 Leder, S.; Upadhyaya, R.; van der Geest, K.; Adhikari, Y.; Buttner, M. 2024. Rural out-migration and water governance: gender and social relations mediate and sustain irrigation systems in Nepal. World Development, 177:106544. (Online first) [doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106544]
Irrigation systems ; Farmer managed irrigation systems ; Gender ; Women ; Migration ; Water governance ; Households ; Food security ; Land ownership ; Villages ; Political aspects ; Water user groups / Nepal
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H052617)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X24000147/pdfft?md5=18d6857bb31ba980ab3ea17a89d118ad&pid=1-s2.0-S0305750X24000147-main.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H052617.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H052617.pdf
(0.67 MB) (684 KB)
Rural out-migration is changing agrarian political economies and natural resource governance worldwide, and gender and social relations play an important mediating role. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of rural out-migration on collective action in farmer-managed irrigation systems, with a particular focus on household structure and gender relations.
We employ a mixed-methods approach combining a household survey (n = 377) of ten villages conducted in early 2021 with 80 qualitative interviews, 12 focus group discussions and participant observations in two villages carried out between 2015 and 2021 in Far Western Nepal. Using descriptive statistics as well as univariate and multivariate analyses, we explore migration patterns, household relations and the functionality of farmer-managed irrigation systems based on system maintenance, resource mobilization, and satisfaction of water allocation and conflict management.
Our results show that 60.7% of all households had at least one migrant in the past five years, of which 83% were male. We find that collective labor in irrigation systems is not affected by male out-migration. Absent men’s labor contributions are successfully substituted by women. Furthermore, participation in water user groups or irrigation committees is significantly higher in migrant households. Lastly, the findings revealed no effect of migration on crop yields.
These results challenge the generalizability of widespread assumptions of deteriorating community-based resource management systems, and expand debates on the “loss of labor” in rural areas and the “deagrarianisation” due to rural out-migration. Our analysis contributes to current studies on migration effects on rural societies by demonstrating the sustaining role of gender and social relations in water resource governance. An important policy implication of our analysis is that women should be recognized as key actors in the agriculture and irrigation sector, and should be addressed and integrated accordingly.
We employ a mixed-methods approach combining a household survey (n = 377) of ten villages conducted in early 2021 with 80 qualitative interviews, 12 focus group discussions and participant observations in two villages carried out between 2015 and 2021 in Far Western Nepal. Using descriptive statistics as well as univariate and multivariate analyses, we explore migration patterns, household relations and the functionality of farmer-managed irrigation systems based on system maintenance, resource mobilization, and satisfaction of water allocation and conflict management.
Our results show that 60.7% of all households had at least one migrant in the past five years, of which 83% were male. We find that collective labor in irrigation systems is not affected by male out-migration. Absent men’s labor contributions are successfully substituted by women. Furthermore, participation in water user groups or irrigation committees is significantly higher in migrant households. Lastly, the findings revealed no effect of migration on crop yields.
These results challenge the generalizability of widespread assumptions of deteriorating community-based resource management systems, and expand debates on the “loss of labor” in rural areas and the “deagrarianisation” due to rural out-migration. Our analysis contributes to current studies on migration effects on rural societies by demonstrating the sustaining role of gender and social relations in water resource governance. An important policy implication of our analysis is that women should be recognized as key actors in the agriculture and irrigation sector, and should be addressed and integrated accordingly.
Powered by DB/Text WebPublisher, from
