Towards a gendered political economy of water and tourism

Abstract

In many holiday destinations, the tourism industry exerts an enormous strain on water supplies. This generates a range of social problems, not least because local inhabitants often have to compete with the tourism sector over the access, allocation and use of water for their personal and domestic needs. Nevertheless, there has been very little academic research on the link between tourism and the impact of water scarcity on destination populations in developing countries. While there is a wealth of literature on gender and tourism development, such research has tended to focus on employment relations and tourism policy and planning, neglecting ecological issues such as water. Drawing on original ethnographic research conducted in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, in 2013, this paper makes a preliminary attempt to address this gap in the literature by developing a gendered political economy approach to water in tourism development.Three key themes are identified from this research: the salience of intersectional inequalities of gender, class and nationality, in particular the different experiences of Nicaraguan women, Costa Rican women and women from the Global North; how the role of social reproduction is vital to understanding gender and water in Tamarindo due to enduring assumptions about women's perceived responsibility for water; and the gendered dimensions of conflicts over water. Such conflicts are highly gendered and contribute to reshaping of power relations in this international tourism destination. In the conclusions, we argue that our findings demonstrate the need to pay attention to both intersectionality and social reproduction, as well as to identify a future research agenda for developing a gendered political economy approach to tourism and water.

Household water insecurity is strongly associated with food insecurity: Evidence from 27 sites in low‐ and middle‐income countries

“…In much of the world, women are the primary household water managers (Cole & Ferguson, ; Sultana & Loftus, ), just as they are often the primary preparers of food (Wutich & Brewis, ). A recent meta‐analysis of 42 studies found that there is moderate quantitative evidence and strong qualitative evidence to demonstrate that carrying water heightens fatigue and other physical ailments (Geere et al, ; Geere, Cortobius, Geere, Hammer, & Hunter, ).…”

Residential Tourism, Swimming Pools, and Water Demand in the Western Mediterranean

“…Their use is associated with leisure activities in Western societies (Van Leeuwen 1999;Wiltse 2007;Wolf and Hof 2013), and pools have become a common element in the sprawling areas of many cities (Salvati et al 2015). Pools in the richer world, especially, constitute part of the myriad of artefacts associated with suburban environments and the landscapes of "high-carbon lives" of residential and tourist settings (Leichenko and Solecki 2005;Urry 2011;Cole and Ferguson 2015).…”

Critical engagements with nature: tourism, political economy of nature and political ecology

“…In particular when fresh water is scarce, does the issue of access become particularly significant as it is paramount for sustainable livelihoods. Following from previous research on inequitable and unsustainable water distribution due to the expression of social power linked to the political ecology of scarce resources (See Cole, 2012), Cole and Ferguson (2015) focus on the relation between the importance of gender in social reproduction practices (responsibility for water in households), class and migration. In their contribution, they highlight the gendered division of labour as social structure framing the relationship between households and water, but they also underline how the gendered responsibility for social reproduction is used to resist and challenge the existing political economy of water use by the tourism industry.…”