Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

Women and Water Policy 251
guarantee that women would be allowed membership to WUAs or a role
in the decision-making processes. In this male-dominated society, it is
no wonder that caste/class and gender assumptions are reflected in the
approach and conceptualisation of the WUAs. The typical arguments used
are that women do not own land; women are unable to attend meetings;
women have never been traditionally involved in irrigation management
and hence need not be involved. The efforts to organise WUAs often continue
to suffer from the already criticised narrow conception of farmers
as male heads of the household. The result is that only the male member
is considered the representative to the WUA.
In fact, what was earlier the domain of the male-dominated irrigation
department has now become the domain of the upper-caste/class maledominated
WUAs. From the point of view of women, therefore, control
by the Irrigation Department has now been replaced by that of the WUAs,
represented by upper-caste/class men. The one household, one representative
rule is still largely applicable in membership criteria for WUAs.
It therefore eliminates what little possibility women would have had in
participating in decision-making processes in the water sector. For women
who are already constrained by socio-cultural roles, participation becomes
even more difficult when formal rules restrict their presence in the WUAs.
Thus, unless conscious efforts are made to recognise these differences and
involve women, Dalits and other resource-poor groups, there is little likelihood
that such institutional reforms will guarantee rights to women, or
for that matter to other resource-poor groups.
Other related issues that have come up from a few studies show that
women are much more attuned to participating and sharing their views
in informal networks rather than the formal set-ups that are seen as legitimate
fora by the experts. The rigid rule-making procedure and ‘boundedness’
of the formal association often restricts women’s participation
(Cleaver 1998).
A GENDERED FRAMEWORK FOR WATER
SECTOR RESTRUCTURING
That brings us to the most vexed question: what, then, is the alternative
framework that gives us a gendered understanding of the water sector