Paula Kantor - AgWISE: A Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Perspective [6:09-11:18]

Then my colleague more will discuss the key findings of our piloting of this module and I will come back then again to discuss the relevance and policy impact of this policy and practice impact So why did we want to focus on agriculture and water insecurity experiences? If you Google women water challenges, you'll get these pictures of women carrying water on their heads And the narrative is very much focused around women's need for water in the household domain for drinking and domestic purposes And somehow that narrative creates a mythical picture that women's challenges with water are restricted to the household drinking domestic use purpose And this was really an outcome of the fact that the integration of gender and water which started in the 1980s coincided with two significant events, the international decade for women And then also the international decade for water supply and sanitation which followed one after the other And somehow that sort of really strengthened the narrative that women's challenges around water are related to drinking domestic uses This is not untrue but what we want to emphasize is that it's not the entire truth as well And also somehow this narrative about women and their drinking water, drinking domestic water challenges creates some sort of a binary picture A division between domestic and productive and we say productive, it's water for productive purposes Here we specifically refer to agriculture system related issues, livelihoods, activities So it creates a more binary between domestic and productive water uses and women and men And you know links women with domestic water issues and men with productive water issues And we really sort of you know there's a lot of literature which is beginning to question this sort of a binary narrative And also what we really wanted to assess is that water scarcity and insecurity, does it really result in sort of a universal experience of these challenges between women and men Because that's also something that the picture presents that all women are deeply challenged by domestic water insecurity experiences And men are by productive water insecurity experiences and it does not further disaggregate which women, how, why and similarly which men, how, why So you know we wanted to add intersectional lengths in this analysis Now for all of us especially CGI are gender researchers who've been working in the agriculture systems We are very well aware of women's roles in agriculture activities And the fact that water is such a key element of anything related to agriculture activities and interventions So unfortunately that remains a very sort of you know there's very limited study and analyses around these issues especially when we compare to all the literature and evidence that there exists in relation to women and drinking domestic water needs challenges et cetera And also we are very much aware that climate impacts are primarily experienced through water So either too little water, too much water and that these impacts are also shaping a feminization of we say labor, agriculture labor because we understand from our study and from other studies that you know this, the climate is driving a lot of male out migration in many of the hot sports that we have identified But then while women take on agriculture increasing you know agriculture responsibilities, they don't really control these decisions But the labor they're their work and their activity and their labor in agriculture systems increases but not with you know not necessarily proportionate to their control of these agriculture systems