International Women’s Day 2016

Understanding the different perspectives of men and women can help deliver more equitable water access

Understanding the different perspectives of men and women can help deliver more equitable water access

Every individual has their own take on the environment around them, and that can influence how natural resources are identified and managed. Men and women, for instance, interact with water resources and landscapes in different ways. How they see things and what they have to say about them can be quite different. This disparity has led to criticism that researchers frequently fail to recognize these gender based distinctions.

Photo: Liza Debevec
Photo: Liza Debevec

 

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is parity. That implies that a 50/50 split should be the ultimate goal of development interventions. But by understanding better what men and women actually want from their land and water, a more responsive model for intervention can be derived.

A good example of how community knowledge can improve resource allocation and access emerges in a recently published study led by the researchers from the International Water Management Institute. The team attempted to find out just how different gendered perceptions of a landscape were by asking communities in Ethiopia to create three-dimensional maps of their local areas.

[pullquote type=”pullquote3″ content=”Imagine if you hired an electrician and a carpenter to come into your home and put in a new wall with a power outlet and they operated in parallel instead of together?” quote_icon=”yes” align=”center” textcolor=”#308e10″]Imagine if you hired an electrician and a carpenter to come into your home and put in a new wall with a power outlet and they operated in parallel instead of together?[/pullquote]

Men and women living by the Melka tributary of Meja River in Oromiya region were separately provided with identical three-dimensional models representing the same 20km² landscape. They were then asked to create their own maps based on what features were important to them. The results clearly showed the distinct perspectives of the two genders. For instance, only women identified holy water sites along streams, while men identified twice as many sacred trees on the landscapes.

The authors of the study believe that these participatory three-dimensional maps can be combined with bio-physical models to help further research on how communities can best manage their water resources. Community derived maps can give insights into local priorities, encourage active engagement in the research process, and help give a clear focus to gender based differences and tradeoffs.

The mapping exercise revealed differences not only in how men and women saw their landscape, but also in how researchers saw it as well. While the researchers were focused on land use and crop type, community participants gave priority to soils. Women in particular focused their map on soils, which they saw as representing aspects of productivity and land degradation, rather than grazing lands or farming practices as seen by men. Community perceptions were shaped by the knowledge passed down from elders and by mutual consensus. They expressed their ideas in local terminology and with detailed descriptions of soil types and fertility limitations.

Photo: Liza Debevec
Photo: Liza Debevec

 

This mismatch between the priorities of scientists and locals highlights a critical issue in research for development. Researchers typically come into communities with pre-identified “problems” and tell local people what they think is wrong. A more open minded approach, rejecting the notion that scientific knowledge is inherently ‘better’ or ‘more correct’ could deliver results that are of greater use to vulnerable groups.

The team also ran the gendered maps through the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), a hydrological model. The community-derived maps integrated well with SWAT, and provided insight about community priorities that biophysical research alone would not have seen.

Bringing the two mapping techniques together could transform landscape research. Lead author, Tracey Baker says that it is all about combining expertise. “Imagine if you hired an electrician and a carpenter to come into your home and put in a new wall with a power outlet and they operated in parallel instead of together?” she says. “You might get a wall in one place and a new electrical outlet in some other place, when actually you wanted a new wall with a power outlet, not a new wall and a power outlet.”

The study calls for more collaboration between local communities, government, and NGOs to build on these research approaches. This should encompass other aspects of landscape management such as climate change, proposed land-use changes or other development interventions. It has already inspired more upcoming work on the gendered approaches to ecosystems and understanding how to link it to policy and policy making. So, not only should researchers open up to community members and value their insights, say the authors, they also need to take into account the diverse perspectives of men and women in the community.


 

Read the full research report here: A socio-hydrological approach for incorporating gender into biophysical models and implications for water resources research

This work is supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Water Land and Ecosystems (WLE)

 

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