Your search found 7 records
1 Mukhamedova, Nozilakhon; Wegerich, Kai. 2014. Land reforms and feminization of agricultural labor in Sughd province, Tajikistan. Colombo, Sri Lanka: International Water Management Institute (IWMI). 37p. (IWMI Research Report 157) [doi: https://doi.org/10.5337/2014.208]
Land reform ; Feminization ; Gender ; Women ; Female labor ; Employment ; Agriculture sector ; Farms ; Households ; Poverty ; Income ; Water user associations ; Case studies / USSR / Tajikistan / Sughd Province
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: IWMI Record No: H046493)
(2 MB)
This report analyzes the influence of agrarian transformations on the feminization of agricultural production in rural Tajikistan. It explores women’s multiple labor relations for meeting basic needs of the household. The evidence shows that households have to depend on more types of agricultural work to secure day-to-day as well as long-term livelihood security. Overall, feminization appears in different types and groupings. The implication is that women in agriculture might not be adequately targeted in policies or integrated within intervention programs.
2 Leder, Stephanie; Clement, Floriane; Karki, Emma. 2017. Reframing women’s empowerment in water security programmes in western Nepal. Gender and Development, 25(2):235-251. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2017.1335452]
Water security ; Gender ; Role of women ; Empowerment ; Multiple use ; Feminization ; Development programmes ; Domestic water ; Water use ; Water quality ; Water resources ; Communities ; Households ; Farmers ; Case studies / Nepal
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H048204)
Water security has become the new buzzword for water and development programmes in the rural South. The concept has potential to focus policymakers and practitioners on the inequalities and injustices that lie behind lack of access to affordable, safe, and clean water. The concept of women’s empowerment also provides an opportunity to do this. However, the vast majority of water security interventions using the term are apolitically and technically framed and fail to understand complex intersectional inequalities. We suspect that many of these interventions have been implemented following a business-as-usual approach with the risk of reproducing and even exacerbating existing gendered inequalities in access to and control over water. This article explores these concerns in the context of four villages in Western Nepal, where two internationally funded programmes aimed to empower women by improving access to water for both domestic and productive uses. They hoped to transform women into rural entrepreneurs and grassroots leaders. However, differences between women – such as age, marital status, caste, remittance flow, and land ownership – led to some women benefiting more than others. Water programmes must recognise and address difference between women if the poorest and most disadvantaged women are to benefit. Gender mainstreaming in the water sector needs to update its understanding of women’s empowerment in line with current feminist understandings of it as a processual, relational, and multi-dimensional concept. This means focusing on inter-household relations within communities, as well as intra-household relations. In addition, we recommend that water security programmes rely on more nuanced and context-specific understandings of women’s empowerment that go beyond enhanced access to resources and opportunities to develop agency to include social networks, critical consciousness, and values.
3 Allan, T.; Bromwich, B.; Keulertz, M.; Colman, A. (Eds.) 2019. The Oxford handbook of food, water and society. New York, NY, USA: Oxford University Press. 926p. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190669799.001.0001]
Food systems ; Water systems ; Society ; Food security ; Water security ; Food supply chains ; Value chains ; Water resources ; Water management ; Virtual water ; Water footprint ; Agricultural water use ; Agricultural trade ; Conservation agriculture ; Irrigation management ; Water scarcity ; Natural capital ; Political aspects ; Policies ; Municipal water ; Water demand ; Pollution prevention ; Agricultural production ; Transformation ; Wheat ; Coffee industry ; Rice ; Oil palms ; Meat ; Beef ; Pricing ; Pesticides ; Farmers ; Water user associations ; Gender ; Feminization ; Household consumption ; Diet ; Hunger ; Malnutrition ; Obesity ; Poverty ; Sustainability ; Technology ; Subsidies ; Ecosystem services ; Infrastructure ; Drought ; Flooding ; Soil erosion ; Semiarid zones ; Arid zones ; Drylands ; WTO ; Modelling / Africa / Mediterranean Region / North America / Western Asia / United Kingdom / England / Wales / USA / Brazil / Australia / Jordan / Israel / South Africa / California / Cape Town / Sonoran Desert
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: 333.91 G000 ALL Record No: H049524)
(1.26 MB)
Society’s greatest use of water is in food production; a fact that puts farmers centre stage in global environmental management. Current management of food value chains, however, is not well set up to enable farmers to undertake their dual role of feeding a growing population and stewarding natural resources. This book considers the interconnected issues of real water in the environment and “virtual water” in food value chains and investigates how society influences both fields. This perspective draws out considerable challenges for food security and for environmental stewardship in the context of ongoing global change. The book also discusses these issues by region and with global overviews of selected commodities. Innovation relevant to the kind of change needed for the current food system to meet future challenges is reviewed in light of the findings of the regional and thematic analysis.
4 Birkenholtz, T. 2022. Infrastructuring drip irrigation: the gendered assembly of farmers, laborers and state subsidy programs. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 21p. (Online first) [doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221100386]
Drip irrigation ; Technology ; Infrastructure ; Farmers ; Labour ; Subsidies ; Gender ; Women ; Feminization ; Political ecology ; Policies ; Households / India / Rajasthan
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H051459)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1177/25148486221100386
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H051459.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H051459.pdf
(1.83 MB) (1.83 MB)
This paper examines the relationship between the diffusion of drip irrigation technology, state subsidy programs to encourage its adoption by farmers, and gendered labor dynamics. Drip irrigation is promoted globally as a water conserving agricultural innovation that enhances water-use and productive efficiency by increasing yields with less water, while freeing up “saved” water for other uses. India leads the world in its rate of expansion and in total area. Relying on analyses of government drip irrigation policies and ethnographic field research conducted between 2015 and 2020 in the Indian state of Rajasthan, I find the successful diffusion of drip irrigation is dependent upon state subsidies, farmer adoption decisions and the availability of female labor. I engage conceptual work on water conservation technologies, and from feminist political ecology and infrastructure studies to argue: (1) the diffusion of drip irrigation is better understood as a gendered process of infrastructuring; which (2) is an ongoing process of the assembly of state subsidies, the aggregation of decentralized individual farmer adoption decisions, and the availability of on-demand, underpaid female labor; where (3) female laborers provide a “feminine labor subsidy” that produces productive efficiency gains and lends drip irrigation infrastructure its durability. Conceptualizing drip irrigation as a gendered process of infrastructuring, renders visible its emergent and gendered material politics. The conclusion discusses prospects for reassembling drip irrigation infrastructure in more materially just ways and its implications for the political ecology of water infrastructure.
5 Leonardelli, I.; Kemerink-Seyoum, J.; Kulkarni, S.; Bhat, S.; Zwarteveen, M. 2023. A feminist analysis of women farmers navigating groundwater qualities in Maharashtra, India. Water Alternatives, 16(1):134-152.
Women farmers ; Feminization ; Irrigation schemes ; Water quality ; Aquifers ; Households ; Polluted water ; Tap water ; Policies / India / Maharashtra / Pune / Purandar Lift Irrigation Scheme / Mula Mutha River
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H051687)
https://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol16/v16issue1/692-a16-1-9/file
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H051687.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H051687.pdf
(1.34 MB) (1.34 MB)
It matters whose practices and knowledges are foregrounded in understanding and managing groundwater. This paper presents the findings of an ethnographic study of a relatively recent irrigation scheme that brings polluted water to farmers’ fields in a drought-prone area of Maharashtra, India. After establishing that women farmers are the de facto water managers at household, field, and community levels, we use these findings to compare women farmers’ ways of doing groundwater with the dominant techno-managerial versions. Techno-managerial versions of groundwater make it appear to be either an optimizable input for crop production or a source for drinking and domestic uses. Women’s practices reveal that groundwater resists such classifications. Because of how it flows, seeps, and percolates, the polluted water earmarked for irrigation contaminates groundwater destined for other purposes. Rather than coming in neatly separated flows or containers, separating waters entails hard work and detailed knowledge. This is work that largely falls on women: they need to learn to appreciate and distinguish between water qualities as the basis for deciding which water to use for which purpose. Our analysis underscores the importance of valuing this unremunerated and invisibilised work in water management. It also shows how feminist analyses contribute to and expand understandings of justice and sustainability in groundwater.
6 Haque, A. T. M. S.; Kumar, L.; Bhullar, N. 2023. Gendered perceptions of climate change and agricultural adaptation practices: a systematic review. Climate and Development, 19p. (Online first) [doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2023.2176185]
Gender ; Women ; Climate change adaptation ; Farmers ; Intersectionality ; Feminization ; Political ecology ; Rural development ; Social networks ; Sociocultural environment ; Research ; Sustainability / Africa / Asia
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H051712)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/17565529.2023.2176185?needAccess=true&role=button
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H051712.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H051712.pdf
(3.05 MB) (3.05 MB)
The present systematic review was undertaken to obtain a detailed understanding of how climate change perceptions and adaptation differ globally by gender and different intersections among the farmers. Findings from 41 studies selected following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol, mostly from Africa and Asia, suggest that climate change perceptions and adaptation are highly contextual and considerably varied by gender and different intersections. Existing gender role, farmers’ age, education, knowledge, marital status, intra-household power structure, religion, social status and ethnicity were intersecting with gender and climate change perception and adaptation. Apart from gender and intersectionality, access to resources, social network and local institutions are found to be important correlates of adaptation strategies by farmers. While agriculture being feminized, mere technological changes are not conclusive to climate change adaptation rather socio-cultural, structural and political changes in inevitable. Female farmers were tend to be more concerned and fatalistic about climate change which reminds us the urgency of culturally appropriate climate change communication to obtain informed decision regarding climate change. Future climate change research could be more gender transformative by exploring the existing inequalities lying in different intersections of gender rather than highlighting binary gender differences only.
7 Senanayake, N. 2023. Towards a feminist political ecology of health: mystery kidney disease and the co-production of social, environmental, and bodily difference. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 6(2):1007-1029. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221113963]
Kidney diseases ; Feminization ; Political ecology ; Health hazards ; Intersectionality ; Arid zones ; Agrochemicals ; Drinking water ; Water use ; Women ; Households ; Rice ; Farmers / Sri Lanka / Padaviya / Sri Pura
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H052200)
(0.60 MB)
This article argues for a more rigorous engagement with intersectionality within political ecologies of health. Building on the work of feminist scholars who explore the co-production of social and ecological differences, I examine how health improvement schemes that target practices of natural resource use concentrate value (economic and ecological) and health dividends in particular bodies at the expense of others. As part of this intervention, I draw on long-term and ongoing ethnographic research in north-central Sri Lanka. This region is an endemic zone for a mysterious and deadly form of kidney disease (CKDu) as well as the site of frenzied health improvement intervention. Specifically, and in response to scientific studies that link kidney disease to agrochemical use and drinking water, an increasingly diverse range of actors, from different branches of the state apparatus to private industries and civil society organizations, have invested heavily in reconfiguring the region’s water supply infrastructure and agrarian landscapes. Through an analysis of resident testimonies, I demonstrate that the burden of subsidizing these new “healthful” practices of water provision and agricultural production is unevenly experienced, as are residents’ abilities to adopt and maintain them over time and space. More crucially, I illustrate how schemes designed to heal turn on the production of differentiated harms, including new gendered labor burdens for poor women, and intensified agrochemical use for ecologically and economically resource-poor farmers. Developing these narratives toward a feminist political ecology of health, I demonstrate how social, ecological, and bodily differences intersect to constitute new patterns of health and harm in the dry zone. I conclude by reflecting on how this approach can explain the paradoxical effects of well-intentioned disease mitigation strategies.
Powered by DB/Text WebPublisher, from
