When Water Security Programmes Seek to Empower Women - A Case Study from Western Nepal
When Water Security Programmes Seek to Empower Women - A Case Study from Western Nepal
复制标题
DOI：
10.1007/978-3-319-64046-4_8
复制
发表时间：
2018-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Karki, Emma
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Clement, Floriane;Karki, Emma
赋予妇女权力一直是国际水安全方案的一个关键原则。关于水的论述设想，增加获得水资源的机会可以使被剥夺权力的妇女转变为成功的农村企业家。然而，由于这些计划往往依赖于水，性别关系和赋权的简单化表示，他们有可能延续和加剧性别不平等。我们的研究揭示了推动全球南方农村水安全干预的故事情节，基于尼泊尔捐助者资助的项目的案例研究。后者明确旨在通过改善妇女获得家庭用水和生产用水的机会以及将妇女转变为农村企业家和基层领导人来增强妇女权能。我们主要使用定性方法，基于焦点小组讨论和对家庭和关键信息提供者的半结构化访谈。实地工作是在两个村庄的方案位于两个地区的远西Nepal.Our调查结果显示，性别神话和模式，驱动水安全方案，例如妇女作为个人决策者和企业家，没有充分考虑家庭内部的关系和谈判，赋予意义的妇女机构的价值观。这种方案往往会使家庭和社区内占主导地位的性别规范、做法和不平等的权力关系永久化。我们建议，水安全方案要依靠对增强妇女权能的更细致和更具体的理解，这种理解不仅限于增加获得资源和机构的机会，还包括知识、批判意识和价值观。同样重要的是，这些举措要让男女都参与进来，而不是只针对妇女，并对性别角色和男子气概进行批判性反思。
Women's empowerment has been a key tenet of international water security programmes. Discourses on water envision that enhanced access to water resources can transform disempowered women into successful rural entrepreneurs. However, because such programmes often rely on simplistic representations of water, gender relations, and empowerment, they risk perpetuating and exacerbating gender inequalities.Our study unpacks the storylines that drive water security interventions in the rural Global South, based on the case study of a donor-funded project in Nepal. The latter explicitly aimed at empowering women by improving their access to water for domestic and productive uses and by transforming women into rural entrepreneurs and grassroots leaders. We largely used qualitative methodologies, based on focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with households and key informants. Fieldwork was conducted in two villages targeted by the programme located in two districts of Far-Western Nepal.Our findings show that the gender myths and models that drive water security programmes, e.g. women as individual decision-makers and entrepreneurs, fail to adequately consider intra-household relationships and negotiations and the values that give meaning to women's agency. Such programmes tend to perpetuate predominant gendered norms, practices and unequal power relationships within households and communities. 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 agency to include knowledge, critical consciousness and values. It is also important that such initiatives involve men and women - rather than exclusively targeting women - and initiate critical reflections on gender roles and masculinities.