Gender and Water

Women are often at the periphery of water resources planning, decision making and usage. This discrimination is felt at several levels- at a consumer level, thanks to private business interests and commercial water enterprises, women’s access to affordable water for various purposes is severely restricted; secondly, at the administrator level, women regularly face biases, women water professionals(WWPs) in South Asia talk of gender unfriendly practices at governmental and non governmental organisations like inadequate toilet facilities, cases of sexual harassment and absence of maternity leave policies.

The Crossing Boundaries Project has worked on several initiatives to bridge the gender gap. Our SAWA Fellowship (link) has a policy for giving preference to women students. Our training for IWRM students at the Masters and Ph. D levels include extensive courses in Gender. Our workshops and refresher courses for faculty and mid-career professionals also include Gender modules.

In addition to this, we have worked with local researchers and documentation specialists in publishing a comprehensive report titled “Situational Analysis of Women Water Professionals in South Asia”, chronicling the qualitative and quantitative data of women water professionals in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. This study, done in partnership with Society for Promoting Participative Eco-system Management (SOPPECOM) (link), attempted to develop a broad typology of WWPs working in the region, assess the numbers in the area to give an indicative trend of the numbers, understand the key constraints faced by them, bring visibility to this group and their concerns and further state recommendations for policy and action for WWPs.

In a special series, for various stakeholders like researchers, activists and governmental personnel, five sessions of Gender, Water and Equity Training (GWET) were facilitated to impart understanding of the larger political context of water sector reforms and water rights, strengthen participants’ perspectives on gender, water and equity issues, examine analytical frameworks that could incorporate gender in the planning and implementation of programmes in the water sector and build a preliminary set of skills to incorporate gender and equity issues in the participants’ work situations.

Another important advocacy activity that we worked on the publication of a coffee table book titled, “Women Managing Water”, that includes profiles of 30 women in the water sector from all over South Asia. These women, whether they work in the grass roots or at the community level, in local bodies or as activists or journalists, or as administrators, engineers, scientists, consultants, action-researchers and academics, share inspiring stories of their personal and professional struggles and a offer a glimpse into their work and their incredible achievements.

Our outreach activities in this sphere also includes awareness meetings in different countries in South Asia, where issues related to WWPs are addressed through panel discussions, technical presentations, and where WWPs get a platform to share their views with policy makers, bureaucrats and the public at large.