Abstract
This paper intends to contribute to the debate on gender equality and water within the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs 5 and 6. Farmers organizations are often considered key stakeholders whose participation should be fostered to achieve a good water governance in agriculture and irrigation programs. Nonetheless, many water management interventions tackle participation as an instrumental and formal process. A common assumption is that granting sufficient space for women in water management will automatically ensure a greater gender empowerment. Nevertheless, often low importance is given to assessing who really actively participates and benefits from water development projects, favoring the technical aspects. This paper addresses the articulation between gender, water management and indicators, using male, female and mixed farmer organizations as touchstones in three regions of Senegal. The authors defines a system of water gender indicators grouped into five sections. The first results show more similarities between mixed and female organizations, while the main gender inequalities are visible in the water technique and economic domains. Thanks to this study, we can see how a gender-based analysis may allow to more deeply understand some more or less “hidden” water governance mechanisms and their related implications in terms of project management and policy making.
Highlights
In 2014, the United Nations inaugurated a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aiming to substitute the previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a reference for the new international development Agenda (2015–2030)
The literacy rate of men varied between about 55% (Diourbel) and 67.5% (Thiès) [73]. Another outcome concerned the different levels of input ownership fulfilled by Senegalese women, which appear, generally, poorly represented in the access to agricultural equipment: only 1.3% belong to women, compared with 98.7% for men
Despite the progresses and the better openness shown by such SDGs, through more inclusive and differentiated decision-making processes [80,81]
Summary
In 2014, the United Nations inaugurated a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aiming to substitute the previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a reference for the new international development Agenda (2015–2030). Horticulture, more than other food crops, requires technical expertise, first concerning water management issues, considering the large amount of needed water, which is not always accessible In this framework, drip irrigation systems (largely fostered by international donors) are frequently applied to irrigate home gardens aimed to providing vegetables and a most balanced diet, both for self-consumption and for additional selling purposes [7,8]. In the 1990s, some studies focusing on water access [24,25] shared the “unverified premise that women’s uses of water mainly occur in the domestic or nonmarket sphere, in implicit opposition to men’s uses of water, which are believed to be mainly productive and market oriented” [26] Despite this assumption, some most recent analyses [27,28,29] have started to contest this dichotomy, highlighting the necessity to make more visible the link between women, irrigation and water innovation processes in agriculture. This latter point represents a relatively unexplored issue within the data gathering process, to be taken into consideration for the elaboration of efficient and all-inclusive monitoring and evaluation indicators [39]
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