The Rhetoric and Reality of Gender Issues in the Domestic Water Sector - A Case Study from India

Abstract

The objective of this research is to identify discrepancies berween policy statements, institutional capacities and field experiences in the consideration of gender issues in the management of water projects, on the basis of these contradictions.

This study argues that there is little clarity in domestic water policy and planning on the institutional construct of gender inequality in the domestic water sector. What the water sector interprets as gender and as gender success are discredited when these interpretations are examined according to the theory of gender and evidence of gender inequality observed in the field.

This study analysed official and non-governmental domestic water sector interventions in three states in India, over a period of four years. The emphasis of this study was to qualitatively analyse social relations, and the impact of social relations on people's access to resources across the institutions of households, community, organisations and policy, in relation to domestic water sector interventions.

The findings reveal that there is explicit but incoherent and rhetorical mention of gender in water policies. Gender is misinterpreted as women and gender equity, at best and in rhetoric, is only taken into account in the consideration of women and men's specific water needs. Field analyses reveal that implementation of such policies continue to:

Restrict women in their domestic roles as water producers;

Homogenise women as a unitary social category;

Separate and isolate women from the context of social relations; and

ignore the other social variables that influence gender inequality in access to and control of water.

There is little information on gender issues at other institutional levels of the domestic water sector, as water policy and planning ignores the institutional construct of gender inequality in the distribution of resources, responsibilities and power. There is a blue-print approach of addressing gender in water policy and practice, which does not enable analysis of gender inequality structured across different institution levels, more so because policy aims and practice interventions do not relate to the variations of unequal social relations in different social contexts. The so-called gender interventions structure in coherently in policy and compartmentalised at the community level have merely resulted in a tinkering with a history of institutional gender inequality in water management.

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