Here are over 21 organizations working on gender, water, and related issues. Many of these organizations are making people aware of the importance of taking into account gender in water and sanitation. To learn more, these Frequently Asked Questions (that I originally drafted for the India Water Portal) detail commonly-asked questions about gender, water, and sanitation. Feel free to add more organizations working on similar issues in the comments section on this post.
Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) – Women and Environment Program
APWLD is the region’s leading network of feminist organisations and women. Our 180 members represent groups of diverse women from 25 countries in the region. We have been active for nearly 25 years. APWLD has consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. We are an independent, non-government, non-profit organisation.
Bridge – Development and Gender
Welcome to the Global Resources Database. This library contains over 3,000 specially selected gender documents picked from over 1,500 sources. It covers longstanding concerns and debates as well as emerging issues. It provides access to research, reports and policy documents, as well as records of good practice, lessons learnt and case studies, amongst other things. Each resource has been summarised providing a brief overview, key findings and recommendations, to help you save time deciding which resources you really want to read.
Centre for Arab Women Training and Research
The Center of Arab Woman for Training and Research (CAWTAR) was created on March 7, 1993 in response to the request of a number of Arab governments and civil society organizations and institutions. His Royal Highness, Prince Talal Ibn Abdulaziz is the center’s president. CAWTAR was additionally created to provide the region with a center of research and studies relating to gender and the status of women, of advocacy for the improvement of women’s status and of data collection, indicators and statistics.
CGIAR – Gender and Diversity Program
As part of the CGIAR’s reform process, all previous system-wide programs will be folded into the new CGIAR Consortium Office in Montpellier, France. This includes the CGIAR Gender & Diversity (G&D) Program, which closed as of July 31, 2012.
Genanet – Focal Point for Gender, Environment, and Sustainability
We consider gender justice an indispensible prerequisite for sustainable development. genanet has been created to raise awareness of gender equity in environment and sustainability policy and to integrate it into research, to implement gender mainstreaming in environmental policymaking and into the activities of environmental organisations. genanet will prepare position statements on recent environment and sustainability issues, discuss strategies to implement gender mainstreaming, and will put structures in place to allow effective lobbying of environment policy decisions from a gender perspective.
Gender Action
Gender Action is the world’s only organization that is dedicated to promoting women’s rights and gender justice in all IFI investments. We invite you to join our new global network of Gender IFI Watchers, which will help you hold IFIs in your country accountable for their negative gender impacts.
Gender and Disaster Network
The Gender and Disaster Network started in 1997 as an educational project initiated by women and men interested in gender relations in disaster contexts. We are the first web presence to advocate for gender mainstreaming in disaster risk reduction using the World Wide Web.
Gender and Water Alliance Group
The mission of GWA is to promote women’s and men’s equitable access to and management of safe and adequate water, for domestic supply, sanitation, food security and environmental sustainability. GWA believes that equitable access to and control over water is a basic right for all, as well as a critical factor in promoting poverty eradication and sustainability.
Gender and Water in Central Asia (GWANET)
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) signed on 18 May a Letter of Agreement with the Scientific Information Center of the Central Asian Interstate Commission for Water Coordination to establish a Gender and Water Network (GWANET) in Central Asia Republics (CARs) to improve gender awareness among the water sector stakeholders at regional, national and local levels, and strengthen their capacity in incorporating gender issues into the decision-making process.
GEWAMED
Welcome to GEWAMED Regional Website! In this website, besides the description of the Project, you will find fairly complete information regarding events, news, links, documents, definitions and FAQs in the common domain of gender and water resources management in the Mediterranean Region.
Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA)
The GGCA is a unique network of non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations and UN agencies, whose goal is to ensure that all climate change decision-making, policies and initiatives, at all levels, are gender responsive.
International Gender Studies Center – Oxford
The International Gender Studies Centre (IGS) was formally established at Queen Elizabeth House in 1983 (as the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women) to advance research on gender, culture and development. Before that, it had existed for over ten years as a group convening weekly seminars at Queen Elizabeth House on women from cross-cultural perspectives. The Centre’s members form a multi-disciplinary research unit with backgrounds in social anthropology, human geography, history, literature, law, sociology and politics.
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) – Gender and Environment Program
In 1998 IUCN approved a Gender Policy in which one of the elements was the creation of a Global Senior Gender Adviser Office. IUCN also defined that gender considerations should be an integral part of IUCN programme of work. A network of regional Gender Focal Points are intensively ensuring that IUCN Gender Equality and Equity Policy is taken into account in the initiatives at the regional and national work.
International Water Management Institute (IWMI) – Gender and Equity
If water and sanitation projects and programmes are to be sustainable, equitable and effective, they must be gender-balanced and provide access for all.
Oxfam – Sisters on the Planet
Join a movement of powerful women and men who are teaming up with Oxfam to help women around the world fight hunger, poverty, and climate change.
UN Women
In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. In doing so, UN Member States took an historic step in accelerating the Organization’s goals on gender equality and the empowerment of women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system, which focused exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment.
WATER – Women’s Alliance
We are an international community of justice-seeking people who promote the use of feminist religious values to make social change. We invite you to partner with us to continue making waves in feminism, religions, and societies!
wH20Journal
Our mission is to advance women’s economic and social development by creating a centralized body of interdisciplinary research on water and sanitation issues. The issue is crucially important: Women bear the brunt of gathering water worldwide; in developing countries women walk up to 5km each way and expend up to half their calories on water fetching. Providing water access and sanitation means that women can stay in school longer and are healthier and lose fewer days from sickness in the family. Governments, foreign aid agencies and non-governmental organizations are increasingly paying more attention to the importance of women’s access to water and sanitation.
Women and Gender Coalition
This week the ministers have prepared a ministerial declaration, which unfortunately, goes back in time and seems to forget earlier commitments made by governments to insure the right to water and sanitation.
Women for Water Blog
Women for Water was founded in 2002 in Johannesburg during the WSSD. Partners are active at all levels and address those issues relevant for IWRM. Their activities range from setting up a local women’s group with the aim to create and manage sanitation facilities, to lobbying development partners at international fora, urging them to adopt gender responsive budgeting as an critical tool for gender mainstreaming.
Women for Water Partnership
Women for Water Partnership (WfWP) is a worldwide strategic alliance of local, national and international women’s organisations and networks, active in the areas of sustainable development, water & sanitation, poverty and gender. WfWP consists of 24 women’s networks with subsidiaries in approximately 100 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the EECCA region and Western Europe.
Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO)
As a global women’s advocacy organization, WEDO envisions a just world that promotes and protects human rights, gender equality and the integrity of the environment. Mission: To contribute toward its vision for the world, WEDO’s mission is to ensure that women’s rights; social, economic and environmental justice; and sustainable development principles-as well as the linkages between them-are at the heart of global and national policies, programs and practices.
Women Helping Women (Voss Foundation)
Supporters of Voss Foundation’s Women Helping Women programs are provided with the opportunity to view detailed project descriptions and reports, budgets and timelines, giving them an intimate relationship with the work they are funding. Women Helping Women participants also keep track of their projects and WHW news through the Voss Foundation’s website, Facebook page, or Twitter updates. These sources are regularly updated with project reports, so that donors can stay connected to the African women and girls whom they have helped as well as kept abreast of the activities of other women internationally who are collaborating in the effort.
Water for the Ages 