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Brenda Cranney

Brenda Cranney credits her current career in international development research with the enduring respect she developed for the women she met while traveling in India more than a decade ago.

During the 1980s, Cranney took a month-long trip to India, and met many rural Indian women. "There are so many problems, but there’s this great strength that the women have to just keep going every day against all kinds of adversity." While completing her PhD, Cranney returned to India to do research, as a result of a Young Canadian Researcher’s Award (this award has recently been replaced by the IDRC Doctoral Research Awards) won from Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in 1998. From working in freezing temperatures to encountering a purification ritual, Cranney’s research proved more challenging than she ever anticipated. But it also set the direction for the work she would pursue in the years to come.

Cranney spent a year in the rural areas of Himachal Pradesh, India gathering data and interviewing women from several villages. She examined the effectiveness of community forestry projects that aimed to increase villagers’ incomes. These forestry projects involved tree-raising programs to supply villagers with a source of fuel, fodder, building materials, and other forest products. Cranney’s research looked at whether these programs helped to transform the roles of women and men and the extent to which they affected women’s work, health, and their experience of family and culture.

Forging connections with village women

"I lived in the villages, so I was able to develop relationships with the women and conduct the interviews over extended periods of time. As the women became more relaxed with me, they shared experiences that they were unable to share with me initially. I took part in daily chores such as collecting fodder and water, so I was able to experience firsthand what I was there to research. This experience was by far the most valuable for me," says Cranney.

Cranney found that women had not been involved in planning and implementing the social forestry projects she examined. She noted, "From my limited research data from the women’s point of view, I would suggest that social forestry [in these cases] has not benefited the women. This is especially true in the poorer villages".

Facing unexpected challenges

The circumstances which Cranney faced in the field were challenging, to say the least. "I had mistakenly assumed that I would be ready to start my field work in a specific village within a month of arriving in India," she wrote in her first progress report. In fact, she found that the area she had chosen was very isolated. People had already told her that the area is at a high elevation, with very cold temperatures and deep snow in winter (she was advised that she might need snowshoes). She encountered delays in meeting with forestry and government officials and struggled to find and keep good research assistants. She also found interviews difficult at first because of her limited knowledge of the language.

"Language is definitely a problem even with an interpreter. I am handicapped by not being able to communicate directly with the women. This is an area that I am working hard at resolving," she wrote in an early report.

Upon her return to the field after a short break, she found that some men in the village had decided that a Christian should not have been allowed to stay in the village and a purification ritual had been carried out.

"This was a complete surprise to me as the women and men that I had met there [earlier] were very open with me and wanted me to come back. To add to my problems my research assistant found another job and could not work with me. This meant that not only did I have to find a new area to work in but also I had to find another research assistant."

Finding a way forward

"At this point I considered packing up and going home. I was staying in an apartment with no heat and the temperature inside was so cold it was impossible to work on my computer or write." She was also battling illness and decided to go back to Delhi to take stock of the situation.

She then connected with ASK (Atma Swasthya Kendra), a holistic health farm community involved in village outreach programs, dealing with women’s health, nutrition, sanitation, fertility awareness, and literacy. One of the staff members agreed to be her research assistant and she traveled to Ghanna Hatti in the Shilma region to continue her fieldwork. Teaming up with ASK was very beneficial since this organization had already worked with the women.

"The women related well with me. I feel this is because I shared with them that I was from a rural background and had 11 brothers and sisters," she explained. "They asked me many questions about agriculture — from which crops were grown to what kinds of clothes agricultural workers wore. They also wanted to know why there are so many children (in my family) and what each one does — marital status and employment. The women were also interested in knowing about conditions of women in Canada — is there abuse of women? Do women work harder than men?"

Current Activities

Since completing her award tenure with IDRC, Cranney has returned to India several times to conduct further field research on the impact of the environment on the lives of women. In January 1998, she returned to Himachal Pradesh to conduct postdoctoral research further north from the village she worked in before. One aspect of this research was to develop a feminist research methodology that would clearly delineate the needs of women.

Cranney’s research culminated in a 287-page book Local Environment and Lived Experience: The Mountain Women of Himachal Pradesh, which was published by SAGE Publications in 2001. In the introduction to the book, she writes, "My experience in India …… left me forever changed. I was profoundly affected by the work and by the people that I lived with and grew to care deeply about. By the time I left, I think I had become as much a part of their lives as they mine".

Marianne Wightman is a freelance writer based in Ottawa.

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2002-10-18

News 12 of 16