PIM and Gender

Issues and opportunities. Efforts to promote participatory irrigation management create opportunities for improving women's participation and gender equity in irrigation management. Attention to gender roles can reduce the risks that gender biases and stereotypes lead to women being ignored, disadvantaged or marginalized. Attention to the influence of gender roles on irrigation management can make activities more effective, inclusive and equitable. Women as stakeholders. Women use water as farmers, and in other livelihood activities. Changes in irrigation management may have very different impacts on women and men, and depend on women's roles as decisionmakers, landowners, wage laborers and unpaid family workers. Increased social and economic change in rural areas, particularly temporary labor migration and diversification in household livelihood strategies (e.g. "part-time farming") bring a need to adjust irrigation management accordingly. In many cases women make key decisions about irrigated agriculture, but cultural stereotypes may lead to their situation and needs being ignored or misunderstood. In addition to irrigated agriculture, most irrigation systems do not only deliver water for field crops, but supply water for domestic use, whether washing and bathing in canals or using shallow wells which rely on irrigation water to replenish groundwater aquifers, bringing in a wider range of interests and stakeholders concerned with the management of irrigation.

Gender analysis. A variety of methods are available for analyzing how gender roles affect irrigation management. These may benefit from the involvement of experts in gender and development. However a central part of the process is the involvement of local women in analyzing their situation and concerns regarding ways to improve irrigation management.

The FAO's Socio-economic and Gender Analysis Program prepared handbooks on gender analysis and a specialized field guide that "combines irrigation issues and practices with socio-economic and gender analysis concerns."

Gender in project design. Most governments and international development agencies have policies to promote gender equity. These emphasize how attention to gender issues can and should start from the earliest stages of identifying and planning and continue throughout all aspects of project design and implementation. While earlier Women in Development (WID) approaches tended to focus on separate subprojects for women, such as home gardens, more recent gender and development (GAD) approaches place a wider emphasis on mainstreaming women's involvement in all aspects of project implementation.

The World Bank's GenderNet page links to a variety of information, including sectoral tools for project preparatio. The Indicators and checklists give details on addressing key gender issues throughout the project cycle. :

The Asian Development Bank's Gender and Development page provides a large amount of information. The Gender and Development Checklists, provides information on key issues and strategies for irrigation subsector projects. The ADB's "Policy on Gender and Development" focuses on gender mainstreaming as a key strategy for promoting gender equity and engendering development.:

Roles and rights. Gender analysis often highlights how the roles of women and men in irrigation are linked to broader social relationships concerning rights to land and water, local leadership, inheritance, and other sources of knowledge and power, as well as intrahousehold relationships. Women's access to and control over irrigated land is structured by whether they hold land rights on their own, jointly with husbands, or depend on husbands or male relatives for their access to land. The extent to which women are included in community meetings and decisionmaking expands or dimishes women's opportunities. Such participation is affected by general cultural norms and stereotypes, and by specific matters such as whether meetings are held at times and places convenient for women. The availability of credit and other financial services may be crucial in opening or blocking opportunities for women to profit from irrigated agriculture. Attention to gender in irrigation cannot be limited strictly to roles in water distribution, or infrastructure construction and maintenance, but needs to be examined within the broader context of local social systems.

Gender and PIM. Gender roles have an important influence on how irrigation is managed, and on who does or does not benefit from efforts to improve participation in irrigation management. Women are affected in multiple roles, growing crops, raising livestock, cooking, washing, bathing and other water uses. Women and men should be involved from the beginning and in all stages of activities to change irrigation management that affect their lives. Gender analysis methods can help identify the most important roles, problems and opportunities. These provide a foundation for ensuring that projects and programs include women and men and equitably address their concerns. Doing this effectively often means looking not just at water distribution and infrastructure improvement but also at how rights to land, participation in community decision-making and access to information, credit and other resources can help promote gender equitable development.

Sources for additional information:

1. An annotated list of websites and mailing lists related to gender and community-based natural resources management has been listed by the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada is available at:
2. The Poverty, Gender and Water Page of the International Water Management Institute discusses water deprivation problems, and provides access to a bibliography on gender and irrigation, IWMI publications and other resources:
3. IWMI's recent Research Report 59 by Barbara van Koppen introduces a Gender Performance Indicator for Irrigation:
4. The Gender and Water Alliance "offers a mix of information and knowledge sharing activities such as electronic conferencing, a web site, advocacy leaflets and video, annual reports, capacity building and pilot programmes." GWA has organized a series of Electronic Conferences, with the next conference scheduled for September:
5. Additional documents on gender and irrigation can be found with Search link for this website, and search engines such as Google.