Message 31: Ruth Meinzen Dick

Regarding the rationale for attention to gender, the scope for gender equity to empower women is important, but may not always resonate with water managers, who feel that is not their responsibility.

In a recent workshop on gender and collective action, held by the CGIAR System-wide Program on Property Rights and Collective Action (CAPRi), we also looked at what effect the gender composition of local institutions had on the effectiveness of those organizations. The studies were drawn from a number of sectors, including water. There seems evidence from some cases that involving both men and women can draw upon the complementary strengths of both, leading to more effective resource management. In many contexts, for example, men have advantages in external linkages, e.g. with government departments, and on enforcement of major infractions (e.g. patrolling at night), and may control financial resources for investment. Women, on the other hand, seem to have an advantage for recurring monitoring, and for social sanctioning on an ongoing basis. After reviewing a number of studies, we hypothesize that mixed male and female groups for resource management can be more effective, but they may involve greater transaction costs to set up mixed groups, particularly where there is strong gender inequality or segmentation. We would be interested in learning of cases that either support or contradict these hypotheses.

The overview paper and several case studies, including on water management, are available at:

http://www.capri.cgiar.org/wks_gender_ca.asp

They are in the process of being edited, and will be coming out as CAPRi working papers when revised.

Ruth Meinzen-Dick