Gend. Technol. Dev. http://doi.org/bjnq (2016)

Many adaptation projects provide technology to rural communities with the aim of easing the impacts of climate change. Little attention is paid to how such projects can reinforce stereotypical gender roles, negatively affecting the communities they are meant to assist, however.

Noémi Gonda from the Central European University, Hungary, investigated the impacts of one such project through participant observation and interviews in Nicaragua's 'Dry Corridor'. She found that the provision of water reservoirs and clean cook stoves did not have the intended impact of 'freeing' women from the burdens of tasks affected by climate change, such as fetching water and fire wood.

In fact, the misperception of these tasks as 'women's jobs' and the construction of women as a homogenous group led to an easing of men's chores in many cases. The projects also failed to acknowledge that climate change can ease women's burdens in some cases — for example, driving women to adapt their cooking habits to use less labour-intensive ingredients derived from crops unaffected by climate change.

The research helps to explain why some projects fail to serve the constituencies they target, and shows the need for more ethnographic research to improve future projects.