Gender Matters: Reappraising the Issues of Equity, Participation and Ownership in Watershed Management

Abstract

Equal share in governance of managing natural resources is one of the strategic aspects of neoliberal developmentalism. Additionally, this process of natural resource governance (NRG) considers communities as a homogeneous entity by ignoring the cultural politics of gender division to maintain the latency and equilibrium of the existing gendered order and regime. Watershed developmental project is no exceptional in this regard. The existing empirical literature shows that the gender governance (GG) issues in development projects such as watershed is disproportionate between men and women. This article talks about GG by discussing the issues of equity, participation and ownership in NRG, and it argued that GG cannot be synonymous with gender mainstreaming. Watershed development in India has been taken to address the issues of conservation and production, but it doesn’t address the cultural politics of gendered division. Women are more inclined to be marginalized in the governance of watershed management due to the cultural politics of control and access over the ownership of the natural resource (land) which comes under the hegemonic control of their male counterparts. Women participation in watershed activities is merely for fulfilling the custom of the official quota. Considering the potential function of women participation in watershed activities, the present article seeks to explore the issues and approaches through which the participatory institutions must meet the emerging challenges. This study concludes that the role of women participation in NRG will help in the integration of various form of capital more effectively.

Inclusive Participation in Integrated Watershed Development Programmes: Insights from Bundelkhand, Central India

“…There were also two groups of SCs 7 in Parasai; one of these groups has closer ties to the gadhiwale Yadav community and has greater access to resources. The observed processes of local political negotiations, social inclusion and social exclusion in the integrated watershed management projects reflect similar findings elsewhere in India (Adolph & Turton, 1998;Dash et al, 2011;Kale, 2011;Kumar & Kumar, 2022).…”

“…For women, reasons such as not being taken seriously in the meetings, inconvenient timings of the meetings and lack of information about the meeting are prominent across the villages. The patriarchal structure of the villages also became evident with the finding that about 11.4% of women in Chhatpur and 10.2% in Parasai could not attend the meetings due to lack of support from family members (Kumar & Kumar, 2022;Saxena & Singh, 2014 Women participants from non-dominant communities particularly believed that their concerns were not adequately addressed either in the WC or village association meetings. One of the key informants from Bacchauni village observed that a part of her family landholding is submerged under water after the construction of the watershed until the festival of Deepawali in November.…”