Read at :

Water Resources Management  on the Development Gateway

http://topics.developmentgateway.org/water/rc/ItemDetail.do?itemId=1108596

http://www.wigsat.org/ofan/activities/ecowoman.html

Ecowoman

Women of the Pacific have always been technologists and natural resource managers, requiring considerable scientific knowledge in their day to day lives. They grew the food and invented and used tools for food gathering and preservation, for making clothing, and for healing. They made containers for every required activity. They were educators, passing on traditional technologies, especially to their daughters, knowledge of healing practices and medicines, of the goods and tools necessary for their daily lives, and of food production and collection. Women have always possessed a detailed awareness of the species and ecosytems which surround them, and which make up the bioregion they inhabit. These skills must now be fed with updated information enabling women to act at the macro decision making level, a well as in their long established traditional roles. Further they need to understand the science behind traditional practices, cause and effect, why things happen, and what are the reasons for the way things work, and the consequences of certain practices.

When women’s traditional knowledge and practices were life preserving skills, much status accrued to the adept. Where women have done most of the food growing, the environment was generally protected from exploitation. Women are now often aware of new stresses on ecosystems but are powerless to reduce demands on the earth’s resources.

Long term food supply planning has become necessary in relation to population growth and must take into account effects on the environment and soil fertility Ð sustainability. But the scientific establishment in the region takes little notice of what women are doing, and for their part, when women lack knowledge and skills, they lack control.

Ecowoman is therefore dedicated to:

• promoting equal access for girls and women in the science and technology arena, advocating educational and scientific literacy for them
• developing linkages between professional women scientists and technologists and women’s indigenous scientific knowledge
• strengthening the roles of women so they are able to influence the reallocation of resources in scientific research and practice
• effecting social change by creatng a respect for women’s science and technology so it can be fully shared and used as a common language for all.
• ensuring that all women, including the least educated, have the type of scientific and technical knowledge which will improve their quality of life and ability to care for the environment.

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