Guest Editor’s Introduction: Engineering Masculinities in Water Governance

Engineers historically dominate the water profession. Partly because of this, the profession is notably masculine, both in terms of the numerical dominance of men as in the definition and delimitation of normal professionalism and expertise. Because of the historical and contemporary importance of water engineers in projects of state formation and nation building, water professionalism is also an important site for the production of broader societal ideals of manhood and male heroism.

This thematic issue proposes to improve feminist understandings of the associations between gender and professional performance in the water sector. It does so, by focusing on engineering masculinities in water management and exploring how these influence the contents of expert knowledge and the impacts of their technical and non-technical interventions. For water studies, and environmental studies more in general, the strong association of men with organizational power, authority, technology, engineering and expertise results in a paradox of (in-)visibility:¹ although the physical presence of men is important for the prestige of the profession, and though individuals need to continuously display a specific version of manhood to belong to the professional community, the meanings and implications of masculinity tend to remain invisible and unexplored. This makes it difficult for women and ‘other men’ to become recognized and respected as water professionals, and thus poses an important barrier to the diversity of water institutions. It is also one of the ways in which powers of water governance and technocratic authority present themselves as self-evident, neutral and based on universally valid knowledge. Interrogating the masculinity of water professionalism thus provides an important entry-point for explaining the oft-noted resilience of public water bureaucracies to change.

Approaching professionalism and gender as co-constituted, and inspired by the theoretical notions of cultural performance and cultural politics, the articles look at how engineering cultures and identities are (re-)produced and indeed obtain durability, normalcy and authority through their association with ‘natural’ manliness. In water, this importantly happens through associating typical characteristics of engineers such as scientific rationality, technological prowess and physical hardness to men. Together, the articles draw attention to how norms of water engineering professionalism and manhood either become dominant through their positive resonance with wider societal discourses and displays of elite hood or instead get contested when not fitting with existing gendered hierarchies or technocratic approaches to water governance. The articles thereby also reveal how supposedly universal engineering knowledge is moulded and coloured by specific cultural (often racist, sexist, patriarchal) ideas and ideals, creating often sub-conscious and implicit hierarchies and rankings that work to make it much easier for some categories of human beings to be seen and recognized as talented, high-performing or authoritative than for all others. The papers thus demonstrate that the apparently seamless regeneration of engineering performance and masculinity has the effect of naturalizing and universalizing both.

The analyses contribute to critical engineering studies, feminist masculinity studies and interdisciplinary studies of gendered organization. By comparing different ‘watery’ professionalisms and engineering cultures between countries (Peru and Nepal), the articles trace engineering performances and manifestations of manhood through geography and time. This focus shows how specific professional performances interfere and resonate with wider social and cultural hierarchies and gendered institutions. As a result, the collection sheds an interesting light on the historical processes and cultural spaces that produce professional identities, situated knowledges and engineering masculinities in specific contexts. It also contributes to unravelling the linkages between more or less ‘global’ versions of engineering identities and more ‘local’ ones, illustrating how knowledge moves and becomes legitimate in particular embodied ways. The comparison between Peruvian and Nepalese engineers for instance reveals how similar ‘global’ ideals of masculine professionalism in engineering obtain a different meaning and are differently contested depending on political-economic and ecological histories and cultures. This, in turn, prompts a critical and timely interrogation of how specific ways of understanding engineering identities are themselves scaled and tied to situated (political) projects. This interrogation lies at the heart of a major methodological challenge in feminist masculinity and gender studies: if gender is not a metaphysical substance that precedes its expression, naming and identifying manifestations or performances of gender is always itself part of the cultural and political discursive repertoire of the researcher.

The theme issue engages with ongoing debates in Engineering Studies:

• The issue contributes to the journal’s debate on engineering masculinities and in particular builds on Wendy Faulkner’s contributions, which show that performing an engineer’s job implies performing masculinities and that engineering is often a ‘gender inauthentic’ choice for women.²

• The articles provide new insights into how engineering masculinities emerge and are sustained through educational, bureaucratic and entrepreneurial institutions, exploring how knowledge and authority become embodied, materialized, performed and reiterated. This, in turn, sheds an interesting light on how situated and embodied water expertise travels.

The overall purpose of the special issue is to advance both the theorization of gendered mechanisms in the profession, power and politics of engineering, as well as the understanding of hegemonic and multiple masculinities in water governance. In its explicit engagement with questions of marginality, deviance and resistance, this attempt is clearly anchored in broader political projects to identify and create new discursive, performative and political spaces for feminist and anti-colonial reform by challenging normalcy and taken-for-granted ideas of professional or scientific excellence and authority.

The first article of the theme issue by Margreet Zwarteveen focuses on the irrigation profession in hydraulic bureaucracies and irrigation organizations. It further includes two articles that focus on engineering masculinities in educational and professional practices of irrigation engineering and water management in Peru (Edwin Rap and Maria Teresa Oré) and Nepal (Janwillem Liebrand and Pranita Bhushan Udas). A fourth article, which is a Critical Participation manuscript, looks beyond engineering at Andean irrigation communities in terms of the alternative gendered orders it provides (Juana Vera Delgado and Margreet Zwarteveen).

Acknowledgements

This theme issue was possible because of the organization of a workshop in 2014, which received logistical support from the Water Resources Management Group of the Wageningen University in the Netherlands. We would like to thank Nicoline de Haan for her moral support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Margreet Zwarteveen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7169-1337

Additional information

Funding

The theme issue and workshop further received financial support from the CGIAR Research Programme on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE).

Notes

1 Faulkner, “Doing Gender in Engineering Workplace Cultures – II,” 2009.

2 Faulkner, “Doing Gender in Engineering Workplace Cultures – I,” 2009.