Efforts to assess or estimate, in advance, the social consequences that are likely to follow from specific policy actions (including programs, and the adoption of new polices), and specific government actions (including buildings, large projects and leasing large tracts of land for resource extraction). Social impacts mean the consequences to human populations of any public or private actions that alter the ways in which people live, work, play, relate to one another, organize to meet their needs and generally cope as members of society. The term also includes cultural impacts involving changes to the norms, values, and beliefs that guide and rationalize their cognition of themselves and their society.
Published in Chapter:
Missing Gender Concerns in Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement: The Case of India
Sheetal Agarwal (University of Delhi, India)
Copyright: © 2015
|Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-7405-9.ch006
Abstract
Displacement and its impact on the social, cultural, and economic lives of the affected people is a huge discourse in contemporary India, but very little empirical data is available on the issue of displacement from a gender perspective. By law and by custom, women in India have been largely excluded from owning or inheriting property. The lack of ownership makes women vulnerable, dependent, and at a greater risk of being excluded from the decision-making process during displacement because in most cases it is this “ownership” of land that governs one's entitlement to compensation. The concerns of livelihood loss are also closely related to land. Displaced women are often forced to bear a greater burden. In this chapter, how development-induced displacement impacts women differently and how gender-blind resettlement planning and policies can reinforce gender disparities that already exist in society are examined.