Message 50: Gina Castillo

I must say that there is much to disagree in Chris Perry’s comment.

1. First, he comments that gender asks can we make these facilitities serve their productive purpose better by considering gender related issues. A gender water perspective would say what counts as productive, for whom, by what methods, and for what purpose, what new rules and regulations will this new production regime give rise to, and what effect will this have on gender roles? These would be critical for a gender analysis.
2. to talk about gender and water does not mean that one is reduced to “swapping anecdotes”.
3. Is irrigation a science? Well, Chris seems to think so but many of my friends in the hard sciences dismiss it and call it an applied science concerned with making things work in a particular context. Unfortunately, most irrigation scientists refuse to have the discussion about context. A lot of the thinking tends to be based on input-output models applicable to linear systems, but unsuitable for understanding natural and social systems (chaos theory) where agency and uncertainty seem to be key.

And yet there are points where I do agree with Chris:

1. that irrigation projects cannot be treated as vehicles for the pursuit of emancipation or feminist political agendas.
2. that his views and background are from the “traditional” end of irrigation, much at home in his perception of what science is. Now, his version of science has been heavily criticised not only by feminist scholars but by scientists, philosophers, and social scientists. I think Margreet’s response does an excellent job of summarising this. Susan Harding, for example, details five basic issues around which the feminist critique of modern science (of which irrigation science is part of) evolves. First, there are the widely documented gender inequalities and discrimination practices within scientific education and professions. Second, there is the record of the sciences applied as a tool to justify and effect societal oppressions. So here while the scientist may be “apolitical” or not have a socio-political objective that does not mean that his/her research cannot be used for those purposes. Third, there is the denial of the necessary value-ladenness of the sciences, and therefore also, an inability to discuss whose values and why. Fourth, the social meaning and gender identities employed in scientific discourse are gender laden symbols and metaphors (e.g. objective/subjective, rational/emotional, hard sciences/soft sciences, are symbolically linked to masculine/feminine.) And finally, the relation between knowing and being, and what types of "knowing" and "being" society honors and values, have masculine, androcentric biases.
3. Having said so, there is till much to value in that traditional science that Chris is advocating, for very simple natural and social systems which behave linearly and predictably. But human beings tend to complicate things. And it is here where gender and water can make their contribution – to building a new science.

And now, I must go change some nappies.

Gina E. Castillo