Policy Development Manual for Gender and Water Alliance Members and Partners

This manual provides guidelines designed to help development organisations - government, donor or civil society - concerned with water management or service delivery to develop gender policies appropriate to their own organisational context. The Guidelines have been developed in response to demand from GWA member organisations – but will provide useful information to staff in any organisation striving to address gender issues in their work.

The Guidelines are intended to be enabling rather than prescriptive. They focus on the processes of policy development outlining key steps and issues to address. They do not provide a gender and water policy “blue print”. Considerable experience of the development and implementation of gender policies in different organisational and country contexts indicates that policies are most effective when they are developed by staff within the organisation and reflect their own organisational context, opportunities and constraints.