| Abstract: |
This article aims to investigate some aspects of the social process related to
water resources management and gender relations. Given that gender and water
management are interrelated issues exposed to a growing attention at the
international level, it is therefore necessary to identify relations between
the academic literature, the institutional framework and the field-based
research. This document has been inspired by the Nostrum DSS project (Network
on Governance, Science and Technology for Sustainable Water Resources
Management in the Mediterranean), a Co-ordination Action funded by the
European Commission, which involves eighteen partners from the North and South
shores of the basin. As the scope of the project is to disseminate Best
Practice Guidelines for the design and implementation of Decision Support
System tools (DSS) to identify optimal water resources management regimes,
this article is proposing an analysis of a particular geographical and social
frame related to the social actors involved in the project, but there are no
connections between the paper and the project itself. To create a network
between science, policy and civil society is one of the main objectives of the
project in order to reach an improved governance and planning in the field of
sustainable water management. Therefore, to investigate gender sensitivity in
some areas of the basin shall provide a clue. This overview of academic and
institutional background refers to a particular geographical and cultural
area, the Middle Eastern and North African region. In the first section lies
the theoretical background, that has been extrapolated from international
organisations guidelines and scholars’ publications. The second section is
specifically focused on the Egyptian geographical context. The first paragraph
presents a review of the guidelines suggested by international organisations
related to policies on gender and water, as parts of the changes that the
global scenario has recently been facing, with the shift from the micro level
to the macro level. The second paragraph then describes the side effects of
these overspread trends, which are identified in their missing relations with
the social context of the intervention. The third and fourth paragraphs
introduce the issue of women’s role in water management in the Middle Eastern
and North African Regions, while highlighting relations between women’s
involvement in the public sphere and the role they cover in local communities
organisations. The proportion of the political representation faced by women
in this region is also discussed, tackling their overspread participation in
agriculture and their unrecognised working status. The fifth paragraph of this
paper will discuss a case study in Egypt, concerning an initiative promoted by
international donors and the government aimed at increasing community
participation in the design and management of irrigation canals. The case
study gives a concrete sample to discuss plusses and problems of women’s
participation in water users organisations, synthesising many of the
theoretical issues that have been raised in the first three parts of this
article. |