Women's Nonparticipation in Irrigation Management
Zwarteveen, Margreet and Neupane, Nita (1996).
Free-Riders or Victims: Women's Nonparticipation in Irrigation Management in Nepal's Chhattis Mauja Irrigation Scheme.
(Research Report 7). Colombo, Sri Lanka, International Irrigation Management Institute.
Previous studies attribute the successful performance of the Chhattis Mauja irrigation scheme in Nepal to the fact that all users are involved in its management. This report, based on findings of a case study carried out in the Chhattis Mauja irrigation scheme between June and December 1994, shows that at the head end of the system the group of users is not identical to the group of managers: women are the main users, but only men participate in the Chhattis Mauja organization. The proper recognition and understanding of gender roles, responsibilities, and rights are particularly pertinent in an era when more and more state agencies are turning over responsibility for irrigation management to users' associations.
An analysis of the organizational structure of the Chhattis Mauja irrigation scheme shows the level and nature of men's and women's participation. The final authority for decisions concerning the Chhattis Mauja scheme is vested with the general assembly, of which, in principle, all irrigators are members. In practice, however, only male irrigators are encouraged to participate in meetings. Women do not participate due to illiteracy and because culturally women are not supposed to speak up in front of male relatives. Nor are there women among the branch canal representatives who have the right to vote in the general assembly. Village leaders and members of the Chhattis Mauja executive committee vote at the general meeting to which women have never been invited. So far only men have been elected to the Chhattis Mauja executive committee or held the position of main scheme irrigation leader, responsible for day-to-day operations and maintenance, or messenger, hired to assist the leader. These tasks are considered unsuitable for women because they involve a significant amount of travelling, even at night. In one head end village with a high percentage of de facto female-headed farms, a women was elected village leader; however, she was forced to resign when no one could be found to assist her since other village women did not think of themselves as capable and knowledgeable enough or were prevented by their husbands. Furthermore, men did not want to work under a woman. Village-level irrigation meetings are the only meetings sometimes attended by women; however, women prefer to meet directly with the village leader when they have an irrigation-related problem.
In general, this study has found that women's noninvolvement as formal members in meetings and the lack of female representation in the organization do not seem to negatively affect their access to irrigation services. On the contrary, women succeed extremely well in getting their irrigation needs accommodated, in part because they are not formally participating in the scheme's management. This allows them to take more water than they are entitled to, as well as to contribute less labour to maintenance than they should without being punished. Because women are not recognized as members, the organization has difficulty enforcing its rules on women . At the same time, female farmers cunningly make use of the prevailing gender ideology, which pictures them as weak and in need of protection. Although this ideology does not reflect realities as perceived by women themselves, it strengthens them in their negotiations for more water and in their attempts to minimize their contributions to the scheme's maintenance.
Although overall scheme management performance does not unduly suffer from the lack of users' participation, the problems of free-riding and labour mobilization in the head end do create performance weaknesses. If feminization of agriculture continues to grow, these problems will become more widespread and threaten the sustainability of the whole irrigation scheme. Overlooking women as irrigators, farmers, or water users leads to a faulty understanding of the determinants of the performance of irrigated agriculture and their absence from organizations may lead to inefficiencies in management performance. Policies and interventions based on such an incomplete understanding risk being ineffective. <a href=_url>_text</a> --><NOINDEX></P></p></se_text -->
