Gender and Water

Women for Water Initiative
Women for Water is a project initiated by the Netherlands Council of Women (NVR), Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF) and Business & Professional Women International (BPWI) as a way of working together on water, sustainable development and gender. The IIAV cooperates with the Women for Water initiative in the Women for Water database (http://www.womenforwater.org), an interactive instrument to share the needs and know how in the field and to support the formation of partnerships at the local level. The benefits of including grassroots women's groups in water management need to become widely known. The Women for Water Database can help potential partners to find each other.

Gender mainstreaming in integrated water resource management
The IIAV is part of the Gender and Water Alliance. Our task within the Alliance is to collect information on the successes and failures in gender mainstreaming in integrated water resource management. In a large international project in 2002, the IIAV and its partners organized an e-conference in four languages, each with its own mailing list, to collect that knowledge. The information fed into the advocacy work of the Gender and Water Alliance, into grass roots activism and into the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto in 2003.

The information from the e-conference "Successes and Failures in Gender Mainstreaming in Integrated Water Resource Management" has been collected and is available in 4 languages via CD (contact: [email protected]) or via http://www.genderandwateralliance.org/New/econference.htm.

The Road to Gender Equity in the Water Sector
Water, is, naturally, a women's concern - though one mightn't recognise this from the number of women who participate in national and international water management organisations. Since 1999 the IIAV has conducted consultancies between women's organisations throughout the world to determine how politicians, NGOs, the women's movement, the private sector and the public sector will go forward in the 21st century to ensure that all the world has access to water. The results of the first consultancy were brought together in the publication Gender 21, Women's Recommendations to the 2nd Ministerial Conference on Water.

This publication is also available in French and Spanish.

Gender and Water Alliance
The Gender and Water Alliance was established during the World Water Forum in the Hague, the Netherlands, in 2002. 120 women's organisations and gender experts work together, translating the gender mainstreaming plans into actions. The Gender and Water Alliance has its secretariat at the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre in the Netherlands.

Listserv Gender and Water
To subscribe to the listserv Gender and Water, send an e-mail to [email protected]. In the message area type: "Subscribe water [yourfirstname yourlastname]".
All the discussions can be seen in the archive of the Gender and Water listserv.

Other Gender and Water conferences
The Department for the Co-ordination of Emancipation Policy of the Netherlands Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment and the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management organized an international conference in February 2000: the International Conference Sustainable Development and Water in an International Gender Perspective. The Conference Dossier (03-02-2000) is online available.

Other information resource
Mainstreaming Gender in Water Resources Management.
A document prepared by a group of women with expertise in the field of water management. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the document in PDF format. You can download a free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader from the Adobe website.


For questions or more information please contact: [email protected]