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The South West Area Integrated Water Resources Planning and Management Project (SWAIWRPMP) was supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN) with a substantial grant from January 2006 until June 2015. In the project a concerted effort was made to involve women, and it is said that due to the project’s interventions the political empowerment of women has increased to such levels, that more women are elected in the Union Parishad. The Gender and Water Programme Bangladesh (GWAPB) undertook a field study to investigate whether and how this project has contributed to empowerment of women in the area, especially in the political dimension.

Less than 80 percent of the rural population in Nepal has access to safe drinking water while less than 25 percent use sanitation facility. Inadequate access to safe water supply combined with poor environmental sanitation and personal hygiene practices is among the leading causes of diseases such as diarrhea, dysentery, worm infestation, skin diseases. The The RWSSP Experience used a participatory approach including the non-formal education, hygiene and sanitation education and support to women' s technical training. This proved to have been very effective in empowering the communities including women and seem to result in strong community ownership.

A Regional ToT in Bangla language was designed by GWA and held in collaboration with Pradan at CINI Chetana Resource Centre in Poilan in the outskirts of Kolkata, India, from November 25 to December 1, 2008. The ToT was meant to fulfill a long felt need felt by those working in this part of India and in Bangladesh for gender mainstreaming in IWRM. It was intended to assist participants with knowledge and the resources on gender as an organizing principle of water management. It was the first time that such a 'cross-border' linguistic initiative on gender and water was undertaken between the two countries. The report can be downloaded here.

Report of One day Training Workshop on “Role and Position of Women Farmers in Water Management” 29th August 2008

The first Gender and IWRM workshop of GWAPB was held on 18 – 22 May 2014, at BRAC CDM, Savar, Dhaka.

GWA joined the Tata Institute for Social Sciences, SaciWaters, and Soppecom to support the organization of this 5 days training programme, which was held from 20-24 October 2008 in Goa, India.The training was the first in a series of workshops as part of the “Crossing Boundaries: Regional Capacity Building on IWRM & Gender and Water project” and 29 participants from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Buthan and Nepal participated in the event. The reports starts with the organisation and preparation process, which includes practical tips for those who want to organise a workshop themselves. The second part of the report describes the course day by day and session by session with ample attention for each session’s key points. Apart from gender concepts, current debates about water rights, the course elaborated on gender concerns in key water sectors, like irrigation, domestic water, sanitation and hygiene, in particular menstrual hygiene management. The third section of the report gives an overview of the exercises and activities carried out by the participants. The report continues with an interesting summary of the participants’ comments on the various workshop topics and sessions. It ends with the assessment of the training by the core team. These last two sections hold valuable lessons on (sensitive) contents as well as on training techniques. The daily workshop schedule and detailed evaluation of the workshop can be found in its annexes.

Within the framework of the Crossing Boundaries: Regional Capacity Building on IWRM and Gender & Water Project, GWA was again one of the contributors to the second workshop on Gender, Water and Equity which was held from 27 April -1 May 2009 at the Kalina Campus in Mumbai. A total of 20 participants from India and Nepal participated in the training. Apart from a detailed description of the individual training sessions, exercises, and evaluation experiences, the report features the account of a fascinating plenary on gender, water and sanitation issues in urban slums, which took place after the field visit of the participants to an urban slum in Mumbai.

This report is a review of the Women's Wash Platforms as an approach to gender issues in WASH. The WWP's are teams of women established at the village level, working within their own villages to disseminate information on water and sanitation issues, encourage ‘best practices,’ and implement small Oxfam-­‐funded projects that they design and implement themselves with the help of Oxfam staff and partners.

From 21-23 October 2003, the South Asian Conference on Sanitation took place in Dhaka Bangladesh. GWA presented a keynote "Sanitation, Hygiene and Gender", Rose Lidonde (a GWA representative) was interviewed and GWA materials were distributed. A joint SACOSAN declaration was developed by ministers and high civil servants representing the nine participating countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) in the South of Asia.