Abstract
This article examines women's exclusion from irrigation governance in the Upper Krishna Project (UKP) command area of Karnataka, India, with particular focus on their participation in Water User Cooperative Societies (WUCS) in the northern districts of Vijayapura, Bagalkot, Kalaburagi, Yadgir, and Raichur. Applying a Feminist Political Ecology (FPE) framework, the study interrogates how legal structures, institutional design, and socio-cultural norms intersect to constrain women's agency in water governance. While Karnataka amended its Irrigation Act in 2000 to promote Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM) and has established WUCS with nominal gender targets under ADB-supported reforms, women's participation in governance roles remains structurally limited. WUCS membership is formally tied to land ownership, and the overwhelming majority of landholders in the UKP command area are male. Even where donor programs have achieved a 32% representation of women on management boards, these women are frequently confined to non-voting or auxiliary roles, and women's sub-committees operate outside the main decision-making apparatus. The study draws on secondary analysis of policy documents, ADB project reports, and existing research on gender and land rights in Karnataka. The findings reveal a pattern of 'representation without authority' that parallels patterns of 'feminization without representation' documented in other agrarian contexts. The article argues that without structural reform to land tenure eligibility criteria, binding gender mandates, and targeted capacity-building, gender-equitable irrigation governance will remain unrealized in the UKP command area.