Women/Girls are a key player in the water and food security of their families but not only, also at wider scale like community, regional level. Despite their practical responsibilities, they are still not enough considered in the water sector and associated sectors: the agriculture or energy (cooking /irrigation). i.e In community, they are often under-represented in related decision-making bodies, such as water user/irrigation associations, despite the fact that women produce 60% to 80% of the food in developing countries, and are mainly in charge of fetching water, at 90% in Africa. The definition of a specific goal is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, highlights this imperative. Mainstreaming gender includes enabling women/girls to have the leverages in their hands to facilitate completing their duties and improve their living conditions for themselves and their family/community. Doing so this allows to push forward the general development and the related SDGs (SDG 6 for water, SDG2 for Hunger…).
Therefore, this group has been created for stimulating ideas, getting experiences and gathering recommendations on how to concretely ensure the women participation/consideration at each step of a water project. This working group aims at enhancing and completing the Water Project ToolKit of the European Commission (2011) with updated/practical recommendations to mainstream women voice, and role(s) with regards with the focal areas tackled specifically in the Water Project toolkit: basics and municipal services, water resources management, agriculture, energy (hydropower) and water sector performance.