Gendered Perspectives on Climate Change Resilience: Exploring Women’s Leadership and the Power of Collectives in Community Management of Commons in India

At the core of climate change adaptation lie commons, essential for addressing and mitigating its impacts. Over the decades, literature on local resource governance has successfully dismantled the key argument of Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” (Hardin in Science 162:1243–1248, 1968)—that resources which belong to ‘all’ end up belonging to ‘nobody’ and are left uncared for. In India too, historically, common property resources such as forests, water resources and grazing lands have been the mainstay of rural communities’ subsistence and livelihoods. Local institutions and collectives have been at the forefront of community-led governance and restoration activities pertaining to commons. Moreover, women from tribal and rural communities continue to interact with the commons in unparalleled ways, contributing to building community resilience in the face of climate change. As community leaders, women also facilitate collectivisation and mobilisation efforts for commons conservation. Yet, on one hand, the gender lens seems to have been integrated inadequately in global research on commons and on the other hand, in India, women’s meaningful participation in formal decision-making and leadership positions with respect to community management continues to be undermined. Against this background, using participatory research methods and key informant interviews with rural women, this qualitative study integrates voices from the grassroots across two districts of Rajasthan—Bhilwara and Udaipur—to examine the intersection of gender and commons in enhancing climate change resilience amongst rural communities. In doing so, it highlights how women’s involvement and leadership in commons management has benefitted collective efforts, while also recording the challenges faced by individual women leaders in overcoming structural issues related to caste, education and inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities. Thus, this study acts as a stepping stone in exploring the community’s imagination of climate change resilience through a gender lens, potentially contributing to policymaking for evidence-informed action towards commons governance.