Message 48: Chris Perry

I have been skimming this e-discussion, wondering whether to contribute for some time: Deepa Joshi's reference to participating in discussions 5 years ago, and wondering what has happened since (my paraphrase) persuade me to do so.

I was in charge of research at IWMI about ten years ago -- my background very much from the traditional end of irrigation and water resources management -- World Bank, large dams, government agencies and emphasis on economic "productivity".

The gender initiative was not the first non-conventional assault on that paradigm -- there was turnover, farmer management, "sustainability" and there have since been many more. At the peak of its power, like all the other new ideas, you could not get funding for any research activity that did not have gender written boldly and repeatedly into the script. IWMI employed a number of articulate, dedicated and productive gender specialists at a time when (as now, as far as I know) they had not a single irrigation agronomist or water lawyer in their staff. Sort of a hospital without doctors, but lots of therapists.

I've always thought "gender" is a water issue in the sense of asking "can we make these facilities serve their productive purpose better by considering gender-related issues". I do not see water as a means of addressing the various manifestations of "gender" throughout society -- from changing nappies to access to university education to equal treatment men in matriarchal societies under the laws of inheritance.

Thus my personal view of gender (and the other initiatives) was, and I think remains, that irrigation projects are built to produce food and fibre. To the extent that better addressing gender issues can improve that function (for example by giving both genders their fair say in communal decisions, or in providing an irrigation service that reasonably accommodates gender-specific needs) then the system would clearly meet its food and fibre objectives better by taking account of gender issues.

Too often, however, my impression is that the irrigation project is seen as a vehicle for driving the political agenda of gender -- which is a very different issue. While irrigation projects should be gender-aware, treating them as vehicles for the pursuit of emancipation, or any other essentially socio-political purpose is less clearly acceptable and may have perverse implications for the original productive intent.

Often, indeed, the socio-political objective is not about "gender" -- designing things to work better for both genders, but more precisely about feminism -- I see few neutral references to "gender" and many references to "women".

I also find it interesting that, ten years on from the essentiality of "gender" in the research agenda of the CGIAR and elsewhere, the debate rages -- and rages in the most fundamental way of people still having to explain what they mean by gender, and swapping anecdotes to underpin their viewpoint.

Science is not like this: science consists of hypotheses carefully demonstrated to be apparently true, which in turn form the basis for additional hypotheses. In science you can't join the debate halfway through and expect to be given credibility just because you speak a new language -- in science you either learn the accepted set of knowledge and proceed to try to add to it, or you challenge the accepted set of knowledge (as, for example, relativity challenged and displaced Newtonian physics).

It seems that the "gender and water" topic has yet to achieve (or perhaps even to seek) the status of science.