Irene Leonardelli earns PhD for research on role of female farmers in India
Following four years of PhD research at IHE Delft, Irene Leonardelli from Italy successfully defended her PhD thesis and was awarded with a doctoral degree on 17 May 2023. Professor Margreet Zwarteveen was her promotor and Jeltsje Kemerink - Seyoum her co-supervisor. Dr. Irene Leonardelli shared a few insights of her experience conducting research.
My thesis in a nutshell
“I was interested in researching processes of agrarian transformation and water re-allocation from a feminist perspective. In Maharashtra, India, where I did my research, women farmers do most of the work in the farms because men often work in nearby towns. Farming is delegated to women, who also take care of fetching water daily for their households. But despite these big responsibilities, they are not the owners of the land, and are excluded from the public and political spheres. Yet, I did not want to only point out patterns of exploitation, or how women are victims of an unfair patriarchal and neoliberalism-driven system. I also wanted to narrate how, in their everyday life, they take many important decisions in relation to farming and water management: deciding how to organize the space of the farm and which crops to cultivate, monitoring water infrastructures and deciding which water to use for different purposes, after assessing its quality. In this regard, I looked at women as political actors, focussing on what can be learned from their specific practices and experiences. To do so, I used different bodies of feminist and water literature – I was particularly inspired by feminist political ecology and feminist posthuman scholarship.”
A memorable moment
“The time I spent in Maharashtra, India, was beautiful: going to the farms and the wells with women farmers (and my great translators), spending time with them and their children at home, learning from their everyday life. We had very deep conversations about farming but also about life, love, farming and much more. They were very curious about my life back in Europe, and we developed really warm relationships of friendship and trust. A few months after my first period of research, the Covid-19 pandemic began, and I could not go back for two years due to travel restrictions. Being back in India after two years, meeting my friends there again, was also a moment I cherish.”
Challenges during my PhD studies
“The pandemic really halted my fieldwork, as the methodological approach I had chosen requires spending time with people and following their everyday life. But the pandemic also opened new interesting opportunities: I started to collaborate with other feminist researchers and activists working in other rural contexts of the world, in Morocco, in Algeria, in Peru.
This collaboration gave us a space to work collaboratively from home, continuing our attempts to give voice to and conduct advocacy work to support women farmers as they faced the challenges brought by the pandemic.”
The impact of my PhD
“My work underscores the importance of better acknowledging and valuing the invisible work that women do in water management. This approach helps foregrounding the health and well-being of people, animals, aquifers and much else – rather than focusing only on principles of efficiency and productivity in water management.
In this regard, I hope to foster the idea that women farmers should have more voice in water-management and improved land- and water-rights.”
Your next steps
“My next steps are still unsure. I might continue to do research, engaging with socio-environmental issues from a feminist perspective, or work for some organizations in community projects. I would like to find a way to balance research and practice, conducting careful fieldwork and collaborating with different actors. I also really hope to find a way to remain engaged with women farmers in Maharashtra and to continue my collaboration with different organizations that are based there.”
"I hope to foster the idea that women farmers should have more water-management roles and have improved land- and water-rights. Their dependency on a male-dominated environment should be decreased."
Advice I wish I could give myself when I started my PhD work
“Appreciate change and unpredictability; your plans and ideas might change suddenly for personal reasons or a global pandemic. Be able to readapt, rethink, focus, collaborate. It can also bring a lot of new opportunities. Also, make sure to keep yourself busy outside of your research, cultivating other passions while researching!”