Reweaving resilience: Rural women’s collective strategies as community development practice under water scarcity in Iran

This paper conceptualizes rural women’s collective strategies in water-scarce regions of Iran as gendered, community-led development practices and locally grounded systems of knowledge and governance. Drawing on qualitative research in drought-affected villages in Tehran and Fars provinces, it examines how women mobilize informal institutions, including rotating savings funds, reciprocal labor and care networks, cooperative marketing, peer mentoring, and culturally embedded psychosocial practices, to sustain livelihoods and manage shared risks. Integrating community development theory, feminist political ecology, resilience scholarship, and decolonial approaches, the study conceptualizes development as a relational, gendered, and culturally grounded process. Findings demonstrate that women’s collective practices generate locally rooted development systems that strengthen multidimensional resilience. However, patriarchal norms, regulatory misalignment, limited capital, and infrastructural deficits constrain their sustainability and institutional recognition. The paper advances a decolonial, gender-responsive approach to community development that recognizes rural women’s informal institutions as legitimate sites of governance, agency, and development.