How integrated are women and gender in Integrated Water Resource Management? : a discourse analysis

Abstract: This thesis examines how gender and women are included, constructed and represented in Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) policy documents. Using Critical Discourse Analysis with a feminist approach, this study analyzes ten IWRM policy documents, ranging from the international to national level. Also a developed of Walby’s phase’s for women’s inclusion is used to determine to which degree gender and gender are included on the whole. The results show that the inclusion of women and gender issues is still not self-evident within water management, even though the IWRM framework is based on principles that recognize the importance of women. Women are especially reproduced as providers of household and community water, and the constructed role of women is as efficiency catalysts and care-givers and vulnerable. Furthermore, ‘gender’ is generally equated to ‘women’ or does not go beyond ‘women and men’. Thus, to exclude men from the assessment and the constructing ‘gender’ as an issue that only concerns women entails that it is women who should find the solutions. The ‘local people’ which the policies concern are overall represented as ‘the Other’, in a passive manner.