Gender myth, discourse, and ‘story lines.'

‘‘We should not romanticize community-based water development projects.'  When Dr. Page said this during our WDA lecture, I started reflecting. Have I been romanticizing community/participation based water development projects? Are we creating narrations that made ourselves believing it and relying on it to persuade others? Today, I will be talking about narrations, linking to post development theories, and critiques on participation based projects.

Imageries come up when we think about women in Africa. Narratives from various sources have influenced our imageries on the topic. We often hear narrations about women in Africa being both heroines and victims (Cornwall, Harrison and Whitehead, 2007). They have the high capacities to survive adverse socio-economic conditions. Their abilities to move towards autonomy despite being gender disadvantaged. They are also heavily burdened, with limited choices and often is at the end of receiving oppression and abuses from the males. Created by development advocates, the term ‘gender' has become a discourse that creates its imageries, oversimplifying the issue. The term itself became a problem rather than a solution. Common notions of gender development, for example, includes ‘Women are less corrupt than men'. Empirical evidence has proven that women are less inclined to take bribes and are less involved in shady political deals. These myths about gender arise when we ignore the context-specific nature of gender relations (Cornwall, Harrison and Whitehead, 2007) and are the base of the distorted sympathetic imageries that many of us has towards women in Africa. As a consequence, it is likely that one falls into the trap of romanticizing women's participation in community-based projects.

Although community-based projects under certain conditions, help towards obtaining a wider access to water,  these are by no means a miracle solution (Jaglin, 2002). In a water-based project in Tanzania, although the project succeeded in achieving community management of water supply and in increasing women's participation in the project, the project did not lead to greater equity of water access nor in the decision-making power for women (Tukai, 2005). A simple focus on increased participation and representation of the poor and women in Africa, without understanding the conditions (in many situations, it is chronic and very complicated) might further marginalize rather than empower the marginalized group (Green, 2006;  HarrissWhite, 2006). 

It may sound obvious that oversimplification and romanticizing should be avoided as much as possible. However, I feel that one main idea from our WAD course was that we should always adjust the water projects based on the specific socio-economical; geophysical conditions of the region. Today practitioners such as Cleaver have argued for the need to adjust constantly the projects to deliver beneficial outcomes regarding equity in access to water as well as efficiency in water managements (Cleaver et al., 2005). In addition to the constant readjustments, different supporting actions and processes across a range of scales should be included in order to sustain the promoting inclusion (Cleaver and Franks, 2008).

I will end today’s blog with a quote.

‘Debunk the language, simplify the ideas. No nuances, no problems, just solutions.’---Senior international water policy maker commenting on how to present policy to partner governments at DFID consultation meeting, 24 May 2007.