November Brownbag: Forecast Bulletin & Understanding Women Empowerment

PIRE graduate and undergraduate students gathered on November 5th for one of their last brownbags, where civil engineering PhD student Sara O’ Alexander from University of Wisconsin spoke on the development of the project bulletin followed by sociology PhD student, Selam Negatu, from the University of Connecticut on understanding women’s empowerment.

The developer of the bulletin, Sara, led the discussion of preliminary versions of a forecast bulletin that can be used as part of the PIRE communication strategy to share modelling and rainfall prediction results with the communities we are working with in Ethiopia. She got feedback from the graduate student team that could inform future iterations of the product. Students had a robust discussion on what figures were understandable, what elements were still unclear or hard to interpret, and suggestions for improving the communication of results. The importance of understanding local knowledge and current climate related discourse, as well as what information is valuable to farmers and water managers, emerged as key questions that the team will focus on moving forward.

Selam began with stating first that the term empowerment elicits various definitions and responses within the social science research sphere; overall there is a lack of agreement since empowerment may range to mean participation, power, choice, freedom, an enabling process or the capacity and skill to use available resources and opportunities to maximize one’s own potential.

“Understanding the issue of women’s empowerment is a conceptual tool to forward the gender equality agenda”, she states.

“Failure to observe engagement of women in the management of communal resources such as water for irrigation derails intended outcomes of interventions”.

Selam’s research interest entails: how women’s empowerment is conceptualized and is practiced in development programs in Ethiopia, what is meant by development/empowerment from the bottom and how that is translated into practice in the context of water security, if non-participation is disempowerment or is it an expression of women’s agency and lastly how to move away from consultation, Tokenism, “add and stir approach” to women’s empowerment. Answering these questions could have immediate impacts on improving water supply and gender within the communities with which PIRE is working, including:

  • Time saving: Irrigation schemes helped women in accessing water for domestic purposes, such us cleaning and for construction. This has brought positive changes in the reduction of their workload and in saving time (Romano, 2013).
  • This can enable women to participate in other economic activities, young girls will be freed from carrying water to attend school, and adult women can engage in  more productive work on the farm (Awulachew et.al, 2005).
  • Increased security for women once exposed to violence while collecting water (Calow et.al, 2013)
  • Irrigation provide significant benefits to rural women by enabling women farmers to increase their cash incomes and diversify family nutrition and food sources (IWMI,2010; Calow, et.al, 2013)
  • Active participation of women in water projects challenges gender specific roles and contribute to changing traditional perceptions about women’s status, skills and capabilities held by the community, the family and sometimes women themselves.

 

 

Categories: News

Published: November 5, 2018