Forced Displacement

Development-induced displacement has brought about a profound economic and sociocultural disruption to the victims of displaced communities. While forced displacement affects both men and women, women experience displacement and relocation in a particularly gendered way. This differential impact on women occurs due to the gendered division of labour that has arisen from socio-historical processes of men's traditional incorporation in the wage-earning and labour-oriented tasks while women remain on the land jobs and its management on a daily basis. Resettlement and rehabilitation policies expose the male biases inherent in the insensitivity of the governments towards needs of women. This paper examines the lived experiences of displaced women based on the empirical findings of research that looks at women displaced by the construction of the Tehri Dam and their relocation elsewhere.