Gaylean Davies

Gaylean Davies is a PhD student at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at the University of British Columbia (UBC), supervised by Professor Leila Harris. She is a member of both the EDGES Research Collaborative and the Program on Water Governance. Gaylean is a social scientist whose current research sits at the intersection of gender equality and water governance, access, use and knowledge. Her interests revolve around how water, as an essential resource, organizes and disorganizes gendered relationships. For her current PhD research, she focuses on small water enterprise (SWE) projects designed to ‘empower’ women in underserved sites in Ghana. Using a critical feminist and development lens, Gaylean seeks to understand these projects from the perspectives of women themselves and engages a multi-dimensional and processual understanding of the complex concept of female empowerment.