Research shows that women consider the provision of drinking water the most crucial issue faced by the rural population in India. Elected women representatives (EWRs) are known to have strong preferences for clean drinking water. Yet, they have not been actively involved in determining climate risks and developing effective solutions that would impact communities. While there is a deep emphasis on inequality in opportunity undermining aggregation of women’s preferences for public goods, inequality in voice and agency that can affect deliberation success has not received due attention despite several benefits of deliberation. Hence, increasing women’s agency so that they can participate in actions to address climate change is a crucial policy agenda.
This project aims to address a complex issue: the agents of change, elected women representatives (EWRs), face several constraints.
They do not possess information about the degree and possible propagation of floods, what solutions can ensure water security during flooding events, and how can these be implemented. The regressive gender norms constrain them from traveling to government offices to seek solutions and they do not actively participate in local democratic institutions (village councils) that they are elected for to utilize funding for public goods provision. This team's overarching multidisciplinary goal is how to empower these elected women representatives so that they can seek and provide public goods to ensure water security during floods.
The first objective will be led by human geographers and anthropologists, who will conduct qualitative fieldwork. A practitioner leader will provide local knowledge about solutions and help gain the trust of the communities.
The second objective will be led by the engineering team. Building off of knowledge gained from the first objective, this team will develop flood projections that will be translated into visualizations using vernacular language for accessibility of local consumption.
The third objective will be led by a team in music. They will work with an NGO partner to develop the EWR training program with a focus on the articulation of perspective and needs objectively.
The final objective will be led by the economists on our team from the University of Virginia, the Paris School of Economics, and the World Bank, who will run a randomized control trial to determine if training women using the modules developed in the previous objective leads to increased participation and deliberation of EWRs in village councils, and result in them seeking water security-enhancing infrastructure in times of floods.
