1. Introduction

Water sector professionals can rightly claim a long awareness of gender issues as factors in the success or failure of their programmes. Ever since Barbara Ward, Margaret Mead and other famous women carried buckets of water on their heads through the conference corridors at the first UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I) in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976, the role of women has been an item on the water development agenda. Community participation and women’s involvement were key concepts during the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981-1990). Since that time, hundreds of research projects and conference debates have refined those concepts into methodologies and approaches that seek to make the most of the different priorities and capabilities of men and women in the development and management of water projects.

Today, most water practitioners are well aware of the principles of gender equity, the benefits of involving both men and women in positions of influence, and the threats to project sustainability of adopting a gender-blind approach. That is the plus side of the gender-and-water equation. The negative side measures achievement. Advocates of the gender cause (and there are many) share a common frustration that a generation of rhetoric, research and successful case studies has still had a very limited impact on programmes implemented by national water agencies and supported by international donors. There are far too few women in positions of influence; design decisions are often taken on technical grounds without involving the many different user groups; and the dominating economic criteria frequently further marginalise poorer sections of the community. Even where governments have signed up to international treaties and conventions on gender, their implementation often ends with well-intentioned proclamations in national policy documents that do not find their way into specialised agency programmes.

So, on gender, the water sector gets an “A” for awareness, but a “C” for achievement. What can be done to convert good intentions into positive action in communities that desperately need sustainable water and sanitation services for men, women and children? This Thematic Overview Paper (TOP) seeks to direct policy makers and practitioners to information and expertise that can help towards that goal.