The posititon of women in water resources management institutions

To understand the level of participation of women in Water Resources Management, this chapter goes beyond merely identifying and defining temporal and spatial patterns of their participation but critically analyses the drivers behind such participation. Using the Zimbabwean and Malawean contexts and guided by documentary evidence, key informants responses and survey data, the study examines the level of participation of women in decision making amidst different contestations that surround the notion of women's participation in water resources management. Taking an anthropological interest in minority and subordinate communities encapsulated within larger and dominant groups, this study has no choice but to consider the involvement of the perpetually subjugated "woman" as the object of analysis, whose participation in decision making was phenomenal as a consequence of their subordinate position. Women are therefore projected as the objects that have since influenced institutional transformations and have also been impacted by such reforms.