Stephanie Leder-Büttner

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences | SLU · Department of Urban and Rural Development

Water security has become the new buzzword for water and development programmes in the rural South. The concept has potential to focus policymakers and practitioners on the inequalities and injustices that lie behind lack of access to affordable, safe, and clean water. The concept of women’s empowerment also provides an opportunity to do this. Howe...

Collective farming has been suggested as a potentially useful approach for reducing inequality and transforming peasant agriculture. In collectives, farmers pool land, labor, irrigation infrastructure, agricultural inputs and harvest to overcome resource constraints and to increase their bargaining power. Employing a feminist political ecology lens...

In international research and development discourses, the ‘Feminization of Agriculture’ is often used as a vague umbrella term referring to an increase in women's labor burden and responsibilities in agriculture as a result of male out-migration. However, the term is under-conceptualized, and fails to reflect changing gender relations in agricultur...

Rural out-migration is changing agrarian political economies and natural resource governance worldwide, and gender and social relations play an important mediating role. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of rural out-migration on collective action in farmer-managed irrigation systems, with a particular focus on household structure...

Drawing on 36 studies in 19 countries and three continents, conducted over forty years, this paper revisits the question of how and why smallholders – and smallholdings – persist in the Global South even under conditions of rapid social and economic transformation. The paper argues that a significant part of the answer to this question can be found...

Considerable progress has been made in the field of agricultural research for development (AR4D) toward recognizing gender inequalities in food systems and the implications for agricultural stagnation, food insecurity, poor nutrition, and poverty (FAO, 2023). In highlighting the patterns and consequences of persistent gender gaps and inequalities a...

Translocal water governance in the face of global change: the role of gender and social relations in sustaining collective irrigation systems Public Associate Professor Lecture, warm welcome to join! More information here: https://www.slu.se/en/ew-calendar/2023/3/nj-docentforelasningar-13-mars-eng/

A static and apolitical framing of women's empowerment has dominated the development sector. In contrast, we assess the pertinence of considering a new variable, the will to change, to reintroduce dynamic and political processes into the way empowerment is framed and measured. This article uses a household survey based on the Women's Empowerment in...

This chapter addresses the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on women farmers, with a particular focus on our field sites in the Far-Western region of Nepal. We review Nepal’s government response to COVID-19 with regard to the exclusionary effects of relief and recovery measures for women smallholders. In this context, we highlight the importance of loca...

It is not just the world but our ways of producing knowledge that are in crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed our interconnected vulnerabilities in ways never seen before while underscoring the need for emancipation in particular from the hegemonic knowledge politics that underpin “business-as-usual” academic research that have both contribute...

This paper investigates how ESD is recontextualised in pedagogic practice in geography teaching in Hanoi, Vietnam, with the case study in two schools. Empirical materials for this study include video recordings and observations of 15 geography lessons conducted between 2016 and 2019. The lessons were selected based on the areas where the teachers t...

Transformative engagements – a new way to discuss gender relations in agriculture Our blogpost with new learnings on the importance of EMPATHY and BARGAINING for facilitating critical gender discussions with local groups in the Eastern Tarai, Nepal and North Bihar and North Bengal in India Powerful work with Dipika Das and Gitta Shrestha!!

Register here: rb.gy/bdbevm

COVID-19 and response measures have major economic implications, including for global value chains, and these implications are gendered. Consequently, unlike other chapters that are highly researched, this epilogue is a collective thought piece with our initial thoughts that might form the basis of future research. Large inequalities between women,...

In this chapter, we take up the question of gender mainstreaming with an eye to how it has been undertaken in the global North and South, the obvious connections in the ways in which it is conceived in transnational spaces and institutions, but also some interesting disjunctures that make themselves apparent when seen in a North–South perspective.A...

Do farmers' collectives, which pool land, labour, capital, and skills to create medium‐sized production units, offer a more viable model of farming for resource‐constrained smallholders than individual family farms? A participatory action research project in Eastern India and Nepal provides notable answers. Groups of marginal and tenant farmers, ca...

In any pandemic or major socio-economic crisis, health and food security of marginalized populations will be affected the most. Social and economic inequalities will become visible because households and communities’ responses rely on their financial resources, as well as reliable information and social networks. In rural Nepal, the most marginali...

COVID 19 has exposed the deeply embedded social and economic inequalities in human societies. The cost of the ongoing pandemic is disproportionately borne by the underprivileged and marginalized who lack regular sources of income and safety nets to deal with and recover from the consequences. For households where every day needs for food are covere...

Highlights Social and technical interventions related to agriculture, watersheds, and capacity building should enhance women‘s awareness, access, and decision-making role in agrarian communities. Strict gender norms and relations hinder the empowerment of women in the Bundelkhand region and prevent women from participating in the decision-making pr...

Water security has become the new buzzword for water and development programmes in the rural South. The concept has potential to focus policymakers and practitioners on the inequalities and injustices that lie behind lack of access to affordable, safe, and clean water. The concept of women’s empowerment also provides an opportunity to do this. Howe...

Despite frequent calls for transforma ve approaches for engaging in agrarian change and water governance, we observe li le change in everyday development and research praxis. Empirical studies on transforma ve engagements with gender rela ons among smallscale or tenant farmers and water user groups are par cularly rare. We explore transforma ve eng...

We consider water security as a vision which can be achieved through the means of inclusive water governance. This perspective is strongly rooted in a social and environmental justice perspective which uncovers the multiple relational ties through which diverse and differently powerful actors interact among themselves and with the environment. The...

The Eastern Gangetic Plains is one of the most densely populated, poverty-stricken belts in South Asia. Poor access to irrigation water in the dry season, limited investment capacity and low agricultural innovation, combined with entrenched social structures of class and caste, affects the predominantly marginal farming communities. This project in...

Global discourses have advocated women's empowerment as a means to enhance food security. Our objective was to critically review the causal linkages between women's empowerment and food availability and access. We relied on mixed methods and a crosscountry analysis, using household survey data from Bangladesh, Nepal and Tajikistan and qualitative d...

'Transformative pedagogic practice' probes the gap between the policy Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and contextualized pedagogic practice in India’s heterogeneous educational system. The book explores opportunities for innovation and paradigm change in reproductive classroom teaching and develops principles and methods for ESD grounde...

Transformative pedagogic practice (Springer 2018) probes the gap between the policy Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and contextualized pedagogic practice in India’s heterogeneous educational system. The book explores opportunities for innovation and paradigm change in reproductive classroom teaching and develops principles and methods f...

Notions of “women’s empowerment in agriculture” are common sense in developmental policy, as well as gender and development research. Connections to intersectionality, however, often remain unexplored. Feminist theory recognizes that gender intersects with class, ethnicity, caste, age, religion and other social, economic and cultural divisions whic...

The transnational policy Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) aims to facilitate the transformation of pedagogic practice toward critical thinking and environmental action. I argue that the normative objectives of ESD challenge formal educational systems such as in India where reproductive pedagogies emphasize memorization. As a highly strat...

The notion of “Feminization of agriculture” is often used to focus international development research and practice towards gender-sensitive interventions and technologies. However, the term builds on a dichotomous and essentialist notion of women and men, while social relations of shifting household and community structures in contexts of rural out...

The aim of the project was to improve the livelihood of marginal and tenant farmers in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, particularly women, through innovations in land and labour management and improved water use. These interventions supported increased dry season agricultural production in a region where cropping intensity is low. The project identifi...

This book explores how the transnational Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) policy is being translated into formal school education in India. Stephanie Leder investigates the ESD’s transformative potential for pedagogic practice and builds a set of principles for how the global objectives of the ESD can be interpreted in diverse socio-cult...

This chapter elaborates on my approach of transformative pedagogic practice for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). I explore how ESD principles can contribute to overcome memorization and the fragmentation of knowledge by postulating network and critical thinking, student orientation and environmental action. I argue that the development...

This chapter develops a theoretical framework for transformative pedagogic practice to analyze the transformative potential of Education for Sustainable Development. The framework draws on insights of Basil Bernstein’s Sociological Theory of Education (Bernstein 1975a, 1975b, 1990), Paolo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy (Freire 1996), and the didactic a...

Socially more inclusive approaches to water resource management have been on national and international policy and development agendas over the past three decades. Particularly gender has received a great deal of attention, although there remains a great divide between critical feminist and mainstream developmental research and practice: While femi...

For smallholder farmers across the Global South, the peasantry is facing new patterns of stress. Climate change is converging with an increasingly unfavourable political-economic context, with dwindling plot sizes and weak terms of trade for farmers. There has however been recent interest in alternative models of farming which can support smallhold...

Gender and social inclusion approach in watershed projects: Insights on gender norms and gender relations in Parasai-Sindh watershed, India ICRISAT-CAFRI community watershed project - to increase drought resilience of farming through groundwater recharge and agroforestry interventions. • Three villages - Parasai, Chataarpurn and Bachauni - coverin...

In this chapter, I analyze how power relations and cultural values in pedagogic practice observed in geography lessons at five English-medium secondary schools in Pune relate to the principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The analysis of geography teaching contents and methods is structured according to the selection, sequence, p...

The transnational policy Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) aims to facilitate the transformation of the pedagogic practice toward critical thinking and environmental action. I argue that the normative objectives of ESD have far-reaching consequences for formal educational systems as didactic approaches require transforming prevalent repro...

This chapter introduces the concept of transformative pedagogic practice as an intermediate, transitional form of pedagogy which gradually links the conflicting priorities of reproductive and transformative pedagogic practice. It illustrates how educational policies such as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) pose an opportunity to rethink...

This chapter uses a didactic framework to explore the extent to which India’s educational frameworks reflect the principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Syllabi and textbook analyses serve as an important backdrop for understanding how classroom teaching is structured and for outlining the limitations to achieve ESD objectives. T...

This chapter reflects on India’s educational system and environmental challenges that have the potential to be addressed through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). I examine the development, reforms, and structure of India’s educational system with a particular focus on environmental education and the principal role of textbooks in classr...

This chapter introduces a methodological framework for qualitative geographical education research for international contexts. I use this framework to explore the status quo and opportunities of Education for Sustainable Development through fieldwork, document analyses and an intervention study in India. I argue that geographical education research...

This chapter examines the transformative potential of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) for pedagogic practice in Indian geography education. I analyze how the implementation of a democratizing teaching approach of ESD challenges power relations and cultural values reproduced in pedagogic practice in five diverse English-medium schools in...

This chapter synthesizes the key empirical findings of the book and outlines research prospects and policy implications for translating Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into pedagogic practice. I argue that the educational discourse of ESD, if implemented, has the potential to fundamentally challenge the reproductive mode of pedagogic pr...

This paper examines to which extent a collective farming approach can address gender inequality in water management and the rigid land tenure structures in the Eastern Gangetic Plains. W e investigate how intra - household powe r relationships, gendered norms and intersectionalities shape rules and practices of 16 f armer collectives , and r...

A book review of "Gender Issues in Water and Sanitation Programmes: Lessons from India." Edited by Cronin, Aidan A., Mehta, Pradeep K., Prakash, Anjal. SAGE Publications, New Delhi, India. 2015

This report highlights existing technological and institutional innovations in improving water security for food production in North and Northwest Bangladesh, and their production and socio-economic impacts from the perspectives of different stakeholders, especially differently capacitated farmer groups and women. Data was collected through a liter...

In our research in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, we observed gendered divisions of labor in agriculture, as well as gendered norms in the villages on speaking up and mobility, which hinder women to take up tasks. Within this context, how can farmers work effectively as groups, being aware of those gendered restrictions? Our aim was to develop a part...

Transnational educational policies such as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) stress the role of education for critical environmental consciousness, sustainable environmental action, and societal participation. Approaches such as the promotion of critical thinking and argumentation skill development on controversial human-environment relat...

The theme for the International Women’s Day this year states a measurable objective: “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step it up for Gender Equality”. This may sound straightforward and clear, but is actually a highly complex endeavor. One has to consider gendered practices, perceptions, norms and structures, which are based on socially, culturally, and inst...

Empowerment is a term widely used by academicians, policy makers and development workers, which has resulted in a vague and contested nature of the term’s conceptualization and methodology. Despite its multiple, and partially complex interpretations and what Sharp, Briggs, Yacoub, and Hamed (2003) call a “fluidity in meaning”, the link of empowerme...

The “Participatory Gender Training for Community Groups” aims at sensitizing both farmers and field staff for gender norms, roles and relations, and helps inform, monitor and modify development project interventions. The activities and discussions within arose from science-based learning theories, with the intent of radically flattening predominant...

WHY and HOW should we engage youth in agriculture? While there is currently a lack of data and understanding of rural youth, rural out-migration and high unemployment rates of youth in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa indicate structural constraints for youth to engage in agriculture. What we need to understand is how different groups of youth ar...

Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung (BNE) ist ein transnationales Bildungsziel, welches einen umweltschonenden, kritischen Umgang mit den natuerlichen Ressourcen durch Bildung fordert. Oekonomische und oekologische Prozesse sollen mit einer sozialen Dimension integriert und unter der Norm der Nachhaltigkeit behandelt werden (UNESCO 2011). Der didak...

Book review of Ethnographies of Schooling in Contemporary India, edited by Meenakshi Thapan How are citizenship values translated into schooling processes in India? Rich ethnographies reveal how diversely students perceive, reproduce and subvert schooling intentions in a highly stratified society under the influence of peer cultures, media and mar...

Im Rahmen der von den Vereinten Nationen beschlossenen Weltdekade „Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung“ (BNE) 2005-2014 sollen systemisches und kritisches Denken, Handlungs- und Kommunikationsfähigkeit gefördert werden, um eine Partizipation an gesellschaftlichen Entscheidungsprozessen zu ermöglichen. Konflikte von lokaler und globaler Bedeutung so...

Transnational educational policies are challenging current pedagogic practices in India. The United Nations Decade of “Education for Sustainable Development” (UNDESD, 2005 to 2014) is based on constructivist concepts of learning, and encourages the ongoing transformation from an authoritarian to a participative, studentoriented teaching methodology...

Um geographiedidaktische Fragestellungen mit internationaler Relevanz in einem fremden Kontext zu erforschen, müssen neben didaktisch-methodischen Untersuchungen des Geographieunterrichts auch institutionelle und strukturelle Rahmenbedingungen sowie der sozio-kulturelle Kontext in Betracht gezogen werden. Auf mehreren Ebenen beeinflussen die Strukt...

The UN-decade “Education for Sustainable Development” (ESD) promotes participative, student-oriented teaching methods and challenges traditional pedagogic classroom practices in Geography education in India. This global educational policy based on constructivist concepts of learning stimulates the transformation from an authoritarian, textbook-base...

In India, the subject Geography is often perceived as “languishing social science” (Kapur 2004), which plays a minor role in the already overloaded school curricula. As part of the social sciences in the curriculum, Geography shares its space with history and civics. The latest National Curriculum Framework (2005: 53) advises “to inculcate in the...

Das indische Bildungssystem unterliegt auf Grund struktureller und inhaltlicher Reformen tiefgreifenden Transformationen. Globale Bildungsoffensiven, die auf einem westlichen Lernverständnis beruhen, stehen im Kontrast zu den Realitäten in indischen Klassenzimmern. Am Beispiel der von der UN deklarierten Dekade zur “Bildung für nachhaltige Entwickl...

Zur Untersuchung der Barrieren und Möglichkeiten einer unterrichtlichen Umsetzung der BNE im Geographieunterricht in Pune/Indien wird der Status quo der Inhalte und Methoden am Beispiel der Thematik Wasser im Geographieunterricht in zwölf English Medium Schools vor Ort erhoben. Anhand von Schulbuchanalysen, Unterrichtsbeobachtungen und Experteninte...

Der unzureichende Zugang zur Wasserversorgung in Pune/Indien ist für die dortige Bevölkerung ein existenzielles Problem, dessen komplexe Ursachen und Auswirkungen verstanden und bewältigt werden müssen. Im Rahmen der “Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung” (BNE) soll die Verflechtung ökologischer, ökonomischer und sozialer Einflussfaktoren behandelt...

In arranged marriages, bride-givers and bride-takers participate in the transactional space with different intentions during marriage solemnization. Hypergamy along with caste-endogamy restricts the options for brides’ fathers in the selection of grooms leading to dowry competitiveness while grooms’ families feel justified in demanding dowry as a r...

Die indische Stadt Pune befindet sich aufgrund ihres rasanten Wachstums auf dem Weg zur Megastadt mit großen infrastrukturellen, ökologischen und sozialen Problemen. In Entwicklungs- und Schwellenländer haben große Bevölkerungsgruppen unzureichend Zugang zu sauberem und ausreichendem Trinkwasser als lebensnotwendige Ressource, wofür komplexe Wirkun...

The causes and effects of unequal access to urban water supply in Pune/India are pressing problems which are of present and future concern for students in the context of the UN-Decade “Education for Sustainable Development” (ESD). Its objective is to promote an understanding of the complex interdependence of ecological, economic and social factors...

The present study focuses on the use of prepositions and phrasal verbs by native speakers of American and British who were randomly selected from a specially designed e-mail questionnaire. The speakers’ preferred choices were then compared with the collocations prescribed in several leading ESL grammar books. The comparisons made demonstrated that,...

Die sozioökonomische Polarisierung der Megastadt Mumbai, in der mehr als die Hälfte der Bevölkerung in Slums wohnt, hat gravierende Auswirkungen auf die Gesundheit. Kinder sind besonders verwundbar und tragen die Last vieler Krankheiten. Mit Hilfe des theoretischen Ansatzes „Five Dimensions of Access to Health Care Services“ von PENCHANSKY und THOM...