Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

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.