Geoforum 38 (2007) 815–827 www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum 0016-7185/$ - see front matter  2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2005.10.007 En(gender)ing the debate about water’s management and care – views from the Antipodes Julie Davidson ¤ , Elaine Stratford Sustainable Communities Research Group, School of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 78, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia Received 10 August 2004; received in revised form 13 September 2005 Abstract In this paper, we map the gendered contours of contemporary water management in order to demonstrate that regimes for individual ownership of water rights, markets, and the productive use of water simply reinscribe and simultaneously submerge in their apparent gen- der-neutrality a normative masculinity that underpins economic globalization and fortiWes existing power relations. Not only do such arrangements disadvantage reproductive values and non-consumptive users; more generally, they also lack the capacity to ensure water’s sustainable development. Consequently, new management institutions for sustainability are demanded and, in making a case for equity- enhancing and adaptive institutions that better reXect water’s materiality, its multiple values and emerging water scarcity, we argue the need to invoke the conserving and ecologically protective feminine principle. To support our reasoning, we analyse water reform pro- cesses instituted in Australia and speciWcally by the State of Tasmania, referring to the latter jurisdiction to illustrate the gendered nature of resource management and to underscore tensions between economic globalization and sustainability, concluding that the tensions between the two agendas are probably irresolvable. We position our work in the borderlands among gender studies, feminist geography and philosophy, and political ecology, drawing together insights about the construction of resource management, the possibilities of the feminine care ethic, and ideas about the characteristics of institutional systems that could ensure equitable allocation and sustainable use of the planet’s resources.  2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Water management; Gender; Institutional change; Policy; Tasmania; Ethic of care 1. Introduction In this paper our Wrst aim is to map the gendered and gendering contours of water’s management and care, and in this task we position our work in the borderlands among gender studies, feminist geography and philosophy, and political ecology. Our reference point is Australia – a mid- dle power and member of the “in-between ƒ go-between ƒ semi-satellite ƒ intermediate-development ƒ resource- exporting ƒ fringe” (Laxer, 2004, xii). In adopting neolib- eral policies, both the Australian Government and its six States and two Territories are aVected by the diVerential successes of engaging in international capital enterprises and new forms of governing (Broomhill, 2004). Latterly, our gaze falls on the eVects of water reforms in the periphe- ral state of Tasmania, noteworthy because much of the literature on water management in Australia refers to the mainland and especially the Murray-Darling river basin. Being an island, Tasmania is especially exposed to the eco- logical, economic and social risks that may attend such sta- tus (Anckar, 2002; Armstrong and Read, 2003; Crowards, 2004; Moderators, 2004; Stratford, 2006; Streeten, 1998). Water’s care – and not simply its management – is a prior- ity for such geographic entities. While at least some of our work is Antipodean in focus, a second and larger aim is to draw links between Tasma- nia’s peripheral status and those circumstances which typify many ‘developing regions’ where privatization and marketization are among the few alternatives for water’s * Corresponding author. E-mail address: Julie.Davidson@utas.edu.au (J. Davidson).