Globalization, Gender and Governance in Irrigation: An Inquiry in to Preclusion of Women’s Participation in Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Globalization of Irrigation Management Transfer has brought institutional reforms to enhance the role of water users in the governance of bureaucratic irrigation systems in more than 60 countries of the world. Nevertheless, these new irrigation institutions have not really redefined rights which would make it more gender inclusive to enhance women’s participation in user organizations for water resources management. In the backdrop of primacy accorded by Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and irrigation management literature on the participation of women-farmers in water user associations as a precondition for the efficacy and sustainability of irrigation systems , this paper endeavours to analyse the impact of institutional reforms on gender participation in the governance of Sathanur Irrigation System with the following objectives: To examine membership and representation of women-farmers in Water User Associations and to explicate the relationship between heterogeneity among women-farmers and their participation in Participatory Irrigation Management. Premised on the perspective of post-structuralism that women do not constitute a single homogenous category’, this paper analyses membership, participation and representation of rural women in Water User Associations. While secondary data were drawn from the WRO election reports and Water User Associations records, primary data were gathered by means of a sample survey of women-farmers of Villupuram district adopting proportionate random sampling design. The survey data were analyzed with the help of SPSS package applying Chi-Square test, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Duncan Multiple Range Test (DMRT). Analysis of secondary data elucidates the existence of gender gap in membership of Water User Associations in Sathanur irrigation system. The primary data brought evidences about the existence of heterogeneity among women in agrarian social structure. This research has also brought to light the differences among women members of Water User Associations in relation to their participation in cultivation and Participatory Irrigation Management. Thus, this paper demonstrates that gender insensitive legal framework in the absence of gender mainstreaming in water sector, is more likely to reproduce gender discrimination and reinforce women exclusion in PARTICIPATORY IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT.