Women and irrigation in highland Peru

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Abstract
Women remain invisible in Peruvian highland irrigation despite their increasing participation in other aspects of political life. Despite norms that define irrigation as men's work, women irrigate crops and contribute labor to system surveillance and maintenance. Women who work in irrigation tend to be members of poor, smallholder households and single heads of households. Their labor contributions are not matched by participation in system management, because, with the bureaucratic transition in highland irrigation, the critical task is no longer controlling water per se, but gaining and controlling access to external resources and government assistance. Interactions with the male‐dominated irrigation bureaucracy are dominated by the paternalistic politics of normalcy, rather than the open, confrontational politics of crisis. With token exceptions, women are informally excluded from these interactions or co‐opted into peripheral roles as users of domestic water.

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