Paula Kantor - AgWISE: A Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Perspective [46:37-50:16]

Additional questions. So if there are no more questions we can perhaps close the sessions. Yes, I actually had one quick question before we close the session. I noticed on the next slide, you could go to that one. If I'm not mistaken there in terms of the harassment you mentioned that I can see on the graph that there's a slightly higher percentage of men experiencing the harassment compared to women. Does that relate to the social norm that you were discussing whereby frustration and anger over water is more outwardly expressed amongst men, whereas women internalize that stress. I think if I can answer and then maybe one can add so I think both women and men experience harassment and because water scarcity so high as you can see in the picture during this dry season the canals completely dry up. So, you know, men tend to be actually especially marginalize men, men who express their anger and frustration men from these smallholder marginalized households can can be beaten up can be, you know, there is like bodily harm risks of that. So there are these levels of harassment so whereas women experience sort of I think you know in Bangladesh there isn't or at least we have not seen like in many other countries. Actually there is a risk of women being sexually abused when they go out to fetch water this did not come up in our finding so much but maybe this was also because of the social norms but then what you see there is is also as you rightly pointed out is is women tend to report less because it's shameful to be told that you're harassed. You're harassed and to actually sort of really spell out how you have been harassed but then we've also heard stories of even women being beaten up when they have argued for and tried to contest water appropriation by the elites by the social elites more do you want to add. No, you perfectly said it's true so I was present during that time and that that's happened to that woman called and and she was an NGO worker and I was really surprised that even she was an NGO worker she was already get it but still she was harassed by the powerful people in the field when she was going to you know bring bring her. Cows and and she was really sexually abused during the time so so you know that's happened but they don't wanted to express it they don't want to share it because it's really shameful for them to talk about these things openly or share with others.