Gender and environmental policy: A feminist evaluation of environmental impact assessment and the World Bank

Priya Anna Kurian, Purdue University

Abstract

Environmental impact assessment, a powerful mechanism for influencing social choice, requires the consideration of ecological reasoning in planning and decision making regarding actions that significantly affect the human environment. Despite important scholarly attention to EIA, a significant gap in the literature is the lack of critical analysis of the gender implications and assumptions of EIA. In this dissertation, I address the gap in the scholarship through a critical feminist gender evaluation of the EIA process as seen in the literature and in the conceptualization of EIA by EIA systems. I undertake an empirical study of the World Bank's institutionalization of EIA, with a specific study of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) in India. The primary methodological tool used in this research is a gender framework of analysis that serves to identify and evaluate the gender implications of EIA principles and practice. Gender here is not merely about societally prescribed roles and practices of men and women but rather is seen embodied in the actions and world views of individuals and in the distribution and control of knowledge and resources by institutions. The gender evaluation of EIA theories reveals that most prevalent forms of scholarship are epistemologically masculinist and even those most open to feminist revisionings assume the gender neutrality of the EIA process. The evaluation of World Bank policies on EIA, women and development, and resettlement and rehabilitation reflect a deep-rooted masculinism. The Bank's assurances about "mainstreaming" women in development is not matched by any acknowledgement of fundamental contradictions that exist between its policies on women, environment, and development. Finally, the analysis of policy implementation with regard to the SSP reveals the extent to which culture, class, and gender shape the policy process. Policy implementation in the case of the SSP has been driven by a masculine ideology that has had specific, negative implications for women being displaced by the project. Thus, both the formulation and implementation of Bank policies on EIA are gender biased.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Bartlett, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Political science|Womens studies|Environmental science

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