Volume 5, Number 1
July 1999

IWMI Gender, Poverty, and Water Project

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) recently started new research projects on gender and poverty in water management in six countries. The Gender, Poverty, and Water Project explores how irrigation development, improvement, and reform can result in gendered poverty alleviation in rural areas of the developing world. The central assumptions are that water and irrigated land are major assets with which poor women and men can improve their well-being, and that agencies can alleviate poverty more effectively by targeting their support to the poor. Such inclusive intervention methods primarily strengthen the rights to water and irrigated land of poor women and men. Poor cultivators who obtain access to water and irrigated land tend to make highly productive use of these resources under most conditions. Consequently, poverty alleviation through improved resource rights of the poor is also a viable path to agricultural growth.

Project Focus

The research of the Gender, Poverty, and Water Project is designed to enhance the understanding of the linkages between irrigation, gendered poverty alleviation, and land and water productivity. Additionally, the work aims to improve conceptual tools and methodologies for supporting inclusive interventions and increasing the capacity of those in the irrigation sector to identify and address constraints to gendered poverty alleviation.

Activities

South Africa:
IWMI and its partners are studying the viability of women's smallholder irrigation in the former homelands and the effect of water shortage in the Olifants river basin. Particular attention is being given to the implementation of the new race-and gender-progressive National Water Act of 1998, which formalizes strong water rights for the rural poor. Communities will be mobilized for effective participation in water management fora at both local and basin levels to implement their rights.

South Asia:
Located in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, this study focuses on a complex challenge: the deep-rooted social constructs of gender and caste classification that perpetuate continued exclusion of women and poor groups from access to water and irrigated land. The activities include field-based research that explores public policy and resource development strategies, such as creation of irrigation infrastructure and irrigation management transfer.

Mexico:
Research focuses on gender, property rights, and policy changes in the Lerma-Chapala Basin, Mexico. Based on empirical data and statistical analyses, the project is examining the differences between women and men’s access to land and water resources.

Pakistan:
This study is designed to understand gender-specific roles—particularly those of women and economically disadvantaged men—in water management, and to address women and poor men’s social entitlements to water for agricultural and nonagricultural uses.

Selected Publications

Cleaver, Frances (guest editor). 1998. Special issue: Choice, complexity, and change: Gendered livelihoods and the management of water. Agriculture and Human Values 15:4 (December 1998).

Merrey, Douglas J., and Shirish Baviskar, eds. 1998. Gender analysis and reform of irrigation management: Concepts, cases, and gaps in knowledge. Proceedings of the IIMI Workshop on Gender and Water, September 1997. Colombo: International Water Management Institute.

Van Koppen, Barbara. 1998. More jobs per drop: Targeting irrigation to poor women and men. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute.