26/06/2024

CLOSING GAPS IN WATER AND GENDER

Sustainable social, economic, and environmental development, based on the human being, requires equality and equity between women and men. To achieve this, it is crucial to identify the barriers that hinder their full and equal participation in the governance of natural resources.

The relationship between women and water is not exempt from the predominance of stereotypical roles that limit their involvement in the multiple dimensions of the resource, including its use and preservation, as well as its management, operation, and distribution in decision-making and leadership spaces.

Many women face difficulties in accessing land ownership, which not only limits their economic development but also their active participation in water resource governance...

Therefore, implementing a gender perspective in water governance is key to identifying and subsequently eliminating the social, economic, cultural, educational, and labor gaps associated with women's participation in various areas to achieve truly sustainable development.

Although various international declarations and instruments address the role of women and their connection with water, we are far from being able to affirm that states have fully embraced the principles recognized in these documents in their public policies.

The Dublin Statement (1992) highlighted the role of women in the provision, management, and conservation of water. In the same year, the Geneva Declaration on Rural Women included among its main objectives the formulation of policies aimed at improving the quality of life of rural women, including better health, education, and employment, reducing their unpaid domestic workload, and designing public policies and development projects that involve young rural women in Latin America in managing new communication and information technologies (ICT), social digital integration, and technological gaps.

The Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA), adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995, emphasized the importance of equitable access to water for women to ensure their health (para. 92), and urged that their priorities be considered and included in public investment programs for water and sanitation infrastructure (para. 167.d). It also promoted the recognition of indigenous and rural women's roles in irrigation and watershed management (para. 256.f), among other objectives. Additionally, it outlined the need for women to strengthen their skills, knowledge, and access to and appropriation of ICT.

However, in most Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries, gender inequalities contribute to a lack of equity and inefficiency in the water resources sector, and governments do not show significant signs of having incorporated such recommendations.

The majority of the world's 1.2 billion poor, two-thirds of whom are women, live in countries with water scarcity and lack access to safe and reliable water supplies. At least 70% of the world's very poor live in rural areas (IFAD, 2011), and most of these people depend on agriculture for their livelihood (GWA-UNDP, 2006). The management of community water governance spaces is an area that is difficult for women to access, as they face greater challenges due to having fewer resources and a higher burden of domestic work in households (Cleaver, 1998).

Women make essential contributions to the rural economy of all developing countries as farmers, workers, and entrepreneurs. On average, they make up 43% of the agricultural labor force in developing countries. Water policies often rely on generalized visions that lack a gender perspective and local knowledge (WWAP, 2012). Without integrating gender considerations into water resource management or sectors such as agriculture, urban water supply, energy, and industry, gender inequalities will persist, preventing the adoption of innovative solutions that women can propose.

Promoting sustainable development requires concrete actions in natural resource governance that incorporate criteria and guidelines in different sectorial policies and create synergies to overcome inequalities that prevent the full participation and involvement of women for their personal development and that of the region.

Economic and political crisis scenarios, coupled with prolonged droughts and floods that mostly impact women and girls, require the design of public policies that include women in decision-making, management, and water preservation, and ultimately in water governance, to plan a sustainable and inclusive future.

Institutionalizing the Gender Perspective

In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), policy planning, in various areas and especially related to water resources, lacks the theoretical frameworks and appropriate diagnostics with a gender perspective.

The levels of poverty affecting a large part of the population increase the vulnerabilities women face in accessing productive resources, financing, and scientific and technological training to actively participate in decision-making processes about water management. Without integrating gender considerations into water resource management—in sectors such as agriculture, urban water supply, and energy, and industry— inequities will persist, preventing the adoption of innovative solutions that women can contribute (WWAP, 2012).

Involving women in the design and implementation of public policies and water management will contribute to achieving sustainable economic, social, and environmental development. Empowering women economically, socially, and politically through adequate training will contribute to the equitable and sustainable development of this sector.

The institutionalization of the gender perspective in water management is an incipient process in LAC in general, but in Argentina, at least formally, it has already begun. The Argentine Republic, a federal state, has a series of Water Policy Principles (WPP) agreed upon in 2002 by all its provinces. The WPP aims to provide guidelines that integrate technical, social, economic, legal, institutional, and environmental aspects of water into a modern water resource management system.

Only twenty years later, in 2023, through the Ordinary Assembly of the Federal Water Council (COHIFE), and reflecting the consensual will of all provinces and the Nation, it was agreed to explicitly incorporate the Gender Perspective in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) by approving a new Water Policy Guiding Principle (WPP), number 50.

Gender Perspective in IWRM as a Guiding Principle of Water Policy in Argentina

Acknowledging the Argentine society's awareness of the relevance of mainstreaming the gender perspective, and aiming to achieve Sustainable Development Goal No. 5, which requires the effective incorporation of the gender perspective in IWRM and thus institutionalizing it at all levels of government, Resolution No. 002/2023 of the Ordinary Assembly of COHIFE, dated June 7, approved a new WPP within a specific chapter also created called "Water and Gender."

This principle, identified as WPP 50, states: "The mainstreaming of gender policy in water management must be considered in all actions, from the conception of programs and projects to their materialization and continuous evolution."

It is well known that declarations—like the Beijing Platform for Action, adopted by 189 countries at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995—recommendations, or the approval of principles such as the one discussed here are not enough, although they are a significant step. It is essential that the content of such principles be translated into concrete actions that make them effective. It is necessary to move from "words to action" to close the gender gap in water governance, ensuring equal opportunities in decision-making spaces and integrated water resource management.
 

Marcela Andino is a Doctor of Law from the University of Zaragoza, Spain. Director of the Institute for Equality and Equity for Sustainable Development at the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences of the University of Mendoza, Researcher at the University of Aconcagua, Undergraduate and Postgraduate Lecturer.