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Paper short abstract:

I reflect on the essentialist conceptualisations of 'feminisation of agriculture' and "gender-sensitive water technologies", and explore the intersectional effects of technological and institutional water interventions, as they obscure complex and shifting power relations and gender norms.

Paper long abstract:

The notion of a "Feminization of agriculture" is often used to focus international development research and practice towards gender-sensitive interventions and (water) technologies. However, the term builds on a dichotomous and essentialist notion of women and men, while social relations of shifting household and community structures in contexts of rural out-migration tend to be over-simplified.

This paper critically examines how the gendered discourse of "Feminisation of Agriculture" is used in an international water development program in Eastern India, Nepal and North Bangladesh to implement water intervention approaches such as solar irrigation pumps and drip irrigation technologies as well as institutional innovations such as collective farming.

Taking a feminist political ecology approach, I reflect on the essentialist conceptualisations of 'feminisation of agriculture' and "gender-sensitive water technologies", and explores the intersectional effects of technological and institutional water interventions, as they obscure complex and shifting power relations and gender norms in contexts of out-migration. I also reflect on my own positionality, being involved as a "gender researcher" in the formation and (technological) trainings of 16 farmer collectives in six villages in the Terai, North Bihar and Bengal, as part of a four-year transdisciplinary research project. Based on findings how gender, intersected by class, age, and caste, affect irrigation technology adoption, I argue that space to discuss critical feminist perspectives at both water development initiative and community level supports the integration and implementation of a more reflexive, processual and relational understanding of water technologies, changing power relations and gender constructions in time and space.