Gender-Inclusive Water Governance

Policy Context

India is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change, with over 75 percent of its districts considered “hotspots of extreme climate events” (Mohanty 2020). In particular, the increased frequency and intensity of drought is one of climate change’s most dire consequences in India (World Bank 2023). Moreover, drought-induced water scarcity has distinctly gendered impacts (Pearse 2017). Research shows that rural Indian women are particularly vulnerable to drought, since households use gender-unequal strategies (like early girls’ marriage and stopping girls’ education) to cope with income reductions, and the gender division of labor (where women spend most of their time collecting water for domestic tasks) means that women’s roles are those most impacted by water scarcity. Overall, existing research suggests that drought’s increased intensity and frequency in India will entrench existing gender inequalities.

However, we do not yet know what role the way that water resources are governed plays in conditioning the impact of drought on gender inequality in rural India. Some scholars suggest that when women are included in water governance, this has the potential to increase women’s resilience to drought shocks. In this project, Heinze evaluates a policy experiment in rural India to investigate this possibility. More specifically, she asks: can women’s inclusion in water governance institutions allow them to adapt to droughts more effectively, reducing their vulnerability to the climate crisis? Since 2005, the Indian state of Maharashtra has been the only state to provide quotas for women in local water governance institutions known as water user associations. One update to the project has been that though the institutions of quotas are said to be randomized on paper, fieldwork finds that this is not always implemented in practice.

Study Design

Heinze has conducted qualitative fieldwork to support the survey design of the project. The survey seeks to understand the impact of women’s inclusion in water governance institutions on their climate vulnerability. So far, a few things stand out: 1) women’s inclusion is not uniformly implemented, as is the case in for example gram panchayats; 2) women must be landholders to be members of the water users’ association; and 3) women’s participation seems non-uniform, even when they are formally members. According to Heinze, the survey will likely uncover challenges with women’s representation in natural resource institutions, rather than clear solutions to women’s exclusion in governance. As a result, Heinze has designed the survey to be able to uncover these challenges.

Results

Results Forthcoming.