Gender and emergent water governance: comparative overview of neoliberalized natures and gender dimensions of privatization, devolution and marketization

Abstract

This article provides a critical reading of some of the gendered dimensions of emergent water governance regimes, specifically those related to the privatization, marketization and devolution of water resources management. After first providing an overview of recent nature–society contributions related to neoliberalization processes, the article comparatively evaluates insights with respect to the gender dimensions of recent shifts in water governance. I make several arguments at the intersection of relevant literatures. First, there is a need for gender theorists interested in water resources and nature–society debates to engage more with issues, theories and processes associated with neoliberalization. Second, there is a need for more attention to gender, feminist theory and approaches to inequality and socio-spatial difference in discussions of neoliberalized natures. Third, reading these literatures together reveals that there is a need to be self-reflexive and critical of elements of the gender and water literature that implicitly endorse foundational elements of the neoliberal turn in resource governance. Finally, there are particularities with respect to gender theory and politics, and water materialities that hold importance for understanding recent water governance shifts in the broader context of political and economic changes associated with neoliberalization.

Este artículo provee una lectura crítica de algunas de las dimensiones generizadas de regímenes emergentes de la gobernanza del agua, específicamente aquellos relacionados con la privatización, la mercantilización y la devolución del manejo de los recursos de agua. Luego de proveer primero una reseña de las recientes contribuciones sobre naturaleza-sociedad relacionadas con los procesos de la neoliberalización, el artículo evalúa, comparativamente, las ideas respecto de las dimensiones de género de los cambios recientes en la gobernanza del agua. Presento varios argumentos en la intersección de las literaturas relevantes. Primero, hay una necesidad de parte de los teóricos del género interesados en los debates sobre los recursos del agua y de naturaleza-sociedad, de involucrarse con más temas, teorías y procesos asociados con la neoliberalización. Segundo, hay una necesidad de mayor atención al género, la teoría feminista, y los enfoques de inequidad y diferencia socio-espacial en las discusiones sobre las naturalezas neoliberalizadas. Tercero, la lectura simultánea de estas literaturas revela que hay una necesidad de ser autorreflexivo/a y crítico/a de los elementos de la literatura sobre género y agua que avalan implícitamente elementos fundacionales del giro neoliberal en la gobernanza de los recursos. Finalmente, hay particularidades con respecto a la teoría y la política de género, y materialidades del agua que tienen importancia para entender los cambios recientes en la gobernanza del agua en el más amplio contexto de los cambios políticos y económicos asociados con la neoliberalización.

Keywords:

• gender
• water governance
• neoliberalization
• privatization
• devolution

Keywords:

• género
• gobernanza del agua
• neoliberalización
• privatización
• devolución

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the organizers of the ‘Gender and Water Geographies’ sessions at the Association of American Geographers (AAG) meetings in San Francisco, 2007. I would like to acknowledge Becky Mansfield, Haripriya Rangan, and Jamie Peck for helpful comments. My particular thanks also to Whitney Gantt for the research assistance that was necessary to actualize this article, and to George Allez, Robyn Longhurst, Kathleen O'Reilly, and three anonymous reviewers for considerable efforts to sharpen the arguments presented here.

Notes

 1. It is important to note that neoliberalization does not signal wholesale movement away from state capacity or administration. As Peck (2001), Mansfield (2006) and others have argued, rather than an absence of state institutions and governance, neoliberal shifts typically entail reconfigurations of administrative function or capacity.

 2. Peck and Tickell (2002), among others, have argued that attention should be paid to the geographical and historical constitution of processes of neoliberalization, including ways that variable and local neoliberalization processes are embedded in wider networks and structures of neoliberalism.

 3. It is noteworthy that Castree (2006) has questioned the feasibility of comparative or linked studies. Goldman's (2007) recent analysis of policy networks and World Bank water policies that connect the North and South offers one promising example of this type of work to date (see also Martin 2005).

 4. The figures cited by Goldman (2007, 790) suggest that fewer than 51 million people globally were receiving water from private companies in 1990, mostly in the US and Europe. Ten years later, this number was closer to 460 million and is expected to reach 1.16 billion by 2015. Much of the rapid privatization of water over the past several decades has been in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and, as Goldman explains in detail, loan conditionalities, training efforts of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and its role in consolidating international expert networks have been key reasons for the rapid water privatization shifts.

 5. At once, neoliberalization trends may involve devolution, privatization and commodification trends (with concomitant reduction of state capacity and heightened role for market instruments), and more celebrated moves associated with ‘democratization’ and ‘civil society’ engagement. Thus, neoliberalization processes are often contradictory, involving changes that may be at once emancipatory, liberating and disciplinary (see discussion of Dolhinow in Power 2005 related to tendencies for neoliberalism to be both ‘liberating’ and ‘oppressive’, or Raco 2005 for a discussion of ways that democratization efforts may provide certain liberties to citizens while also ushering in new forms of discipline).

 6. Similar arguments can be found with respect to environmental dimensions of ‘sustainable development’ in Hartwick and Peet (2003). As they argue, environmental concerns have become a critical component of the ideological and institutional framework of neoliberalism.

 7. The ‘Dublin Principles’ refers to the four international principles for water governance agreed upon in 1992 at the Conference on Water and the Environment. In brief, the principles are: 1) That fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential to sustain life, development and the environment. 2) Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy makers at all levels. 3) Women play a central role in the provision, management and safe-guarding of water. 4) Water has economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an economic good.

 8. IMT refers to the treatment of water as an economic good and decentralization of resource management. In other words, neoliberal reforms in the irrigation sector.

 9. Similar arguments are made in more general senses with respect to the need to ensure rights commensurate with responsibilities (Meinzen-Dick and Knox 2001), or ways that decentralization efforts fail when there is insufficient power transfer accompanying these shifts (Ribot 2006).

10. Explicit acknowledgement of risks of devolved resource governance has received increasing attention in the literature, including focus on enhanced corruption possibilities (Upadhyay 2004), increasing burdens on community resources (Ferguson and Malwafu 2001, including women's labor and time), potential that local elites may benefit disproportionately or possibilities that socio-economic inequalities may be aggravated (Ribot 2004 provides useful overviews of all of these issues).

11. Along these lines Ennis-McMillan (2005) makes the provocative suggestion that women's participation in water management in Mexico resulted in greater possibilities for their participation in other democratic political realms (for a point of comparison, Prokopy 2004, writing from the Indian context, suggests that there is little evidence to support such possibilities).

12. See related critique in Ahlers (2002) in terms of potential for focus on the individual associated with neoliberalism to undermine communal and familial relations.

13. To provide a specific example from the gender and water literature, Assaad et al. (1994) argue directly that women must learn self-help techniques to solve water problems and should no longer rely on the government.

14. It is also notable given my earlier discussion that this author also endorses the ideas that devolution will likely lead to cost-effectiveness, improved productivity and sustainability, as well as supporting notions of greater ‘self-reliance’ among users.

15. In a related discussion, Kasrils (2001) considers cost recovery efforts, arguing that they often ignore poverty. As a consequence, he argues for subsidies or other mechanisms for the poor to be able to access safe water under pricing schemes.