Memorandum submitted by Newcastle University
GENDER AND WATER IN SEMI-ARID REGIONS: LESSONS
FROM PRIVATISATION (WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO BOLIVIA)
1. INTRODUCTION
While much academic work has focused on the
pro-poor dimensions of water privatisation, very little of this
has addressed the gender dimensions of these processes. Gender
is important because of the key role that women play in managing
household water (access, distribution, infrastructure maintenance
etc) which has a direct impact on poverty and heath especially
in urban and rural semi-arid regions where competition for water
supplies is strong. Women's role in water management in these
contexts helps explain their extensive participation in anti-water
privatisation movements. The Cochabamba city case in Bolivia (which
rejected the concession headed on the ground by the UK company
International Waters, as part of a wider consortium including
Bechtel, in April 2000)[206]
is now widely accepted as one of the first anti-privatisation
movements to highlight the key role played by women's activism.
While there has been little focus on gender
issues in privatisation, women's roles in water management generally
in both rural and urban settings is well know. Much less is known
about the role of masculinities in the water sector. This evidence
(expressed in more detail in the attached paper, Laurie 2005)
therefore also focuses on how with the globalisation of the water
sector particular masculinities become associated with specific
sets of political and or business practices and strategies.
2. BACKGROUND
CONTEXT GENDER,
WATER AND
SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT
IN ARID/SEMI-ARID
REGIONS
Gender dimensions play a key role in water management
practices in semi arid regions. Divisions of labour by gender
influence specific tasks carried out by men, women and children
up to a certain age in agricultural cycles and associated water
distribution strategies. In the Andean region coupled with cultural
understandings about uses and customs in water management, which
in many places draw on indigenous cosmologies and notions of complementarity
in gender roles, specific gendered practices underpin sustainable
management strategies in semi arid areas.[207]
2.(a) Women as a disadvantaged group
Academic work has long established that women
in the Andean region, regardless of their ethnicity, do not have
the same access to land and water as men. Not only does government
legislation seldom grant them the same rights to water and land
but under community regimes women are also usually dependent on
men for access and control over water.[208]
2.(b) Changing gender roles due to crisis
in semi arid areas
Recent studies have shown that increased out
migration by men in semi-arid areas is leading to a change in
gender roles and divisions of labour in water management and agricultural
practices. In some cases jobs that were previously the sole domain
of men are being carried out by women, adding further to their
work loads and challenging cultural norms about socially acceptable
behaviour for women. In some communities this situation is generating
great pressure for disadvantaged groups of women, such as female
heads of households, who are obliged to buy in male labour and
in extreme cases are pushed to undertake certain water management
and agricultural tasks by stealth for fear of condemnation from
their communities. In a recent study conducted under a DFID/British
Council link between Newcastle and San Simon Universities such
issues have been linked to an increase number of in female suicides.[209]
2.(c) Development paradigms and masculinist
visions
Mainstreaming a gender approach not only requires
taking women's perspectives into account as key actors in water
basin management and ensuring support for women in the research
process but also requires on-going reflection about the gendered
nature of the values and approaches that frame development understandings
and the research process itself. This is particularly important
in the context of research that deals with engineering paradigms
that have traditionally been overly masculinist in their orientation.[210]
3. A GENDER PERSPECTIVE
ON THE
COCHABAMBA CASE
STUDY
Gender is an important axis of analysis for
understanding water issues in Cochabamba. Three themes
have been particularly influential in the privatisation debate.
3.(a) The first theme, the role of
women as water providers and managers, is well established in
the water literature. The case of Cochabamba exhibits the usual
patterns to emerge from such analyses. Women (and to a lesser
extent children) are responsible for water collection, storage
and household distribution. They are therefore key actors in negotiating
the form of provision (for example choosing between different
alternative systems) and their household budgeting strategies
reflect in-depth knowledge about the price structures of different
forms of service as well as water quality and associated health
risks. As a result of their roles as water managers, women have
high levels of participation in a range of water institutions
at a community level. They occupy leadership roles in water committees
and associations where tasks include, for example, monitoring
attendance at meetings and participation in activities that range
through fundraising, collective manual labour (faenas)
and monitoring attendance at protests.
3.(b) Participation in protests, constitutes
the second common theme in the gender and water literature.
The analysis of women's role in water conflicts usually adopts
the approaches of the social movement paradigm. Here women's roles
in popular protests are seen to reflect their interests in practical
gender needs and a concern with household survival mechanisms.
While such approaches have been criticised for focusing on short
term economistic understandings of change rather than on women's
empowerment and the negotiation of changing femininities, they
have also helped construct a powerful political identity for women.
This identity focuses on the supermother (supermadre) a
hybrid identity where women's roles as mothers become politicised.
In this way women gain access to the public and political arena
by protesting about their `legitimate' concerns as mothers. These
concerns include a range of issues relating to the provision and
management of water. Thus they project a traditional, domestic
and therefore politically `safe' femininity, while at the same
time opening up the space for seemingly non-traditional forms
of behaviour and activities. While the social movements literature
has been criticised for an over celebration of the supermadre,[211]
her political success in the water privatisation debate should
not be underestimated. The following quotation from Oscar Olivera,
one of the leaders of the Cochabamba Coordinadora indicates the
contribution that the supermadre role made to Cochabamba water
wars.
The women's role was to organise, to push
and to be the one who used most energy in deciding actions ...
they suggested forms of action, they spoke up saying we mustn't
back down. They took up the logistical support, the food, to go
round collecting food. Cooking, sharing out the food, and after
this I'm sure they went to their houses and attended their families
etc etc. So they had a multiple role while the men's role was
one of staying at the barricades and resisting but the role of
the women, as well as being in the blockades, was to organise
and maintain the blockage and to say we should maintain this blockade
. . . they were the ones who spoke most strongly.... I saw a girl
the youngest take a bucket of water out of her house and place
it outside so we didn't have to (waste time) going in to refresh
ourselves and make sure we didn't breathe the gases (tear gas).
But half an hour later the whole family, nearly all women were
on the corner all with scarves (covering their faces) throwing
stones at the police and with their pales of water in the corner.
Seeing this energy of the women, this decision, this strength,
the machistas ... it's as if we said to ourselves as they are
fighting we also need to throw ourselves in. It was contagious.
(Interview with Oscar Olivera, December 2000).
The participation of women in the water wars
in this way was a key element in the failure of the privatisation
project in Cochabamba in April 2000.
3.(c) The third gender theme that
emerges from the Cochabamba case study focuses on the gendering
of development discourses associated with privatisation and represents
a departure from the usual analyses in the gender and water literature.
This analysis focuses on how, in the context of the increased
global circulation of ideas, practices and technologies associated
with water management, particular policies become accepted.
In my article "Establishing development
orthodoxy: negotiating masculinities in the water sector"
I illustrate how different approaches towards water management
co-exist and compete and that gendered language can be used to
downgrade and upgrade particular political and policy positions
in this debate. In this way certain approaches towards water management,
such as privatisation, become privileged over others. I explain
how when the first discussions about water privatisation in Cochabamba
began in 1996 attempts were made by the state to undermine support
for alternative models of water delivery and opposition to privatisation
by using feminised language to downgrade public sector approaches.
Public sector management was cast as outdated and inefficient
by those promoting privatisation. And the public sector focus
on human development, combating social exclusion and enhancing
social capital/empowerment was labelled as `feminised' by those
supporting privatisation because they argued that rather than
reflecting a commercial agenda this focus was orientated towards
social and welfare interests. The local engineers and experts
who opposed privatisation were derided and disregarded by the
international donors, transnational companies and the government
while the managers of alternative water systems and irrigators
were ignored as actors.
Five years later during Cochabamba water wars
the gender identities displayed by the Coordinadora (the multi-interest
coalition that led the social movement against the private concession)
and its supporters became a tale of the marginalized male actors
(Bolivian professionals, engineers, local politicians, union activists,
irrigators, public sector technocrats and co-operative leaders)
becoming heroic. Their heroic style was in stark contrast to the
public relations gaffs of the personnel in the foreign concessionary
company who failed to engage successfully with the pro-poor agenda
and did not understand the specific context and power of local
practices and histories around water management and politics.
Cochabamba has become a key reference point
in the on-going debates on privatization. The local politicized
identities that emerged in the anti-privatisation campaign in
Cochabamba entered the global arena through anti-globalization
circuits when leaders such as Oscar Olivera traveled to international
rallies in the USA and Europe. Central to the profile of the Cochabamba
water wars in this arena was their representation as an indigenous
movement as the Coordinadora's platform argued that privatization
threatened indigenous uses and customs in water management. This
platform united urban and rural interests in Bolivia in a powerful
way and allowed urban middle class Bolivians to claim an indigenous
heritage while at the same time giving the alliance of indigenous
movements, unions, professionals, women's groups and irrigators
a voice that was recognizable in the global arena. So while regulatory
issues, contractual problems and a lack of transparency and participation
were central to the concession's failure[212]
the gender dynamics and representations in the public relations
battles also played a part.
RESEARCH SOURCES
The material presented draws on work in a number
of funded projects: DFID/British Council link on gender and development
operating between Newcastle University and CESU, San Simo«n
University, Cochabamba, Bolivia (1996-2004); ESRC `Now we are
all Indians?' Transnational indigenous communities in Bolivia
and Ecuador 110,000 October 1998—2000, (L214 25 2023); DFID
(ESCOR) `An examination of the changing contexts for developing
pro-poor water initiatives via concessions in Bolivia' 2001-02
(SSR Project R7895); EU Framework VI INCO(2) `PRINWASS: An international
examination of water privatisation in 10 countries in Africa and
Latin America' 500,000 ECU (2002-2004)
The following article is also attached:
Laurie, Nina (2005) Establishing development
orthodoxy: negotiating masculinities in the water sector Development
and Change 36(3) 527-547
Professor Nina Laurie, Chair of Development and
the Environment and Director of the Developing Areas Research
Network
October 2006
206 These events have became known as the Cochabamba
water wars. Back
207
Boelens, R. and Zwarteveen, M. (2002). Water, Gender and
Andeanity: Conflict or Harmony? In Zoomers, A and T. Salman.
(Eds) Images of the Andes. London: Zed Books. Back
208
Boelens, R. and Zwarteveen, M. (2001) Las dimensiones de género
de los derechos de agua en los sistemas de riego andino. In R.
Boelens and P Hoogendam (eds) Derechos de Agua y Accio«n
Colectiva Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP) Back
209
Regalsky, P. and M.E. Pozo (2006) Cambios Socilaies: microriego
y el sentido de vida de las mujeres de Pocona. In Laurie, Nina
and Mar-«a Ester Pozo (eds) (2006) Las Displiciencias
de Género las Cruces del Siglo Pasado al Nuevo Milenio
en Bolivia CESU, San Simo«n University Press, Cochabamba,
Bolivia, pp.185-202. Back
210
Laurie, Nina (2005) Establishing development orthodoxy: negotiating
masculinities in the water sector Development and Change 36(3)
527- 547; Zwarteveen, M. (2006) Wedlock or deadlock?: feminists'
attempts to engage irrigation engineers. Wageningen: Wageningen
University, Ph.D. thesis; Back
211
Laurie, Nina with Pamela Calla (2004) Development, postcolonialism
and feminist political geography. In L Peake, L Staeheli and E
Koffman (eds.) Mapping Women, Making Politics: Feminist Perspectives
on Political Geography Routledge, London pp 99-112. Back
212
For more details see: Laurie, N. and C. Crespo (2002) An examination
of the changing contexts for developing pro-poor water initiatives
via concessions Final report, project SSR Project R7895, 30th
June 2002. Back
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