Where Water Flows, Equality Grows: WILPF’s Voices on Water, Gender, and Justice
For so many communities, safe, adequate, and affordable water for personal and household use is a necessity that cannot be taken for granted. Access can be uncertain, unequal, and shaped by forces far beyond the tap.
Contributions from WILPF’s Environment Working Group (EWG) reveal how water is closely linked to gender, power, and peace — and why these connections matter.
Women and girls are often at the centre of water systems in their communities. They collect water, manage its use, and sustain households and livelihoods. When water becomes scarce, polluted, or inaccessible, it is their time, health, and safety that are most affected. At the same time, their knowledge and leadership are too often excluded from decision-making processes.
Women Are Not Only Affected, They Are Leading Solutions
One WILPF member recalls a refugee camp in South Africa in the 1990s, where women took the lead in organising access to water under extremely limited conditions. They dug trenches, maintained infrastructure, and tended garden projects that provided food for their communities. These women were far from passive recipients of aid — they were problem-solvers and organisers, building systems that sustained daily life.
Yet their experience also highlights challenges that continue to this day. Water projects were not always designed with long-term local ownership in mind, and knowledge and responsibility were not consistently shared. When external actors left, gaps remained, showing that solutions which fail to centre local expertise risk reinforcing inequality rather than addressing it.
Water, Climate, and Conflict
The global water crisis is further shaped by intersecting pressures. The climate crisisis intensifying droughts and floods, while industrial activity and over-extraction deplete and pollute vital water sources. In many regions, water is increasingly treated as market commodity rather than a shared public good, leaving vulnerable communities without reliable access.
Beyond environmental and economic pressures, water insecurity is also deeply entangled with conflict and peace. Transboundary water sources can become sites of tension when upstream actors control or divert access, making water diplomacy essential. In this context, the meaningful participation of women, as recognised in UN Security Council Resolution 1325, is critical to building sustainable and peaceful water governance.
In situations of war, access to water is not only disrupted but can be deliberately targeted or used as a weapon, as seen in contexts such as Gaza and Ukraine. Armed conflict not only damages infrastructure but also contributes to environmental degradation and the climate crisis, further intensifying droughts, floods, and water scarcity.
Scarcity itself can also drive problematic responses. Technology-driven water “solutions” often require high levels of private investment, reinforcing the commodification of water and deepening inequality rather than addressing root causes.
Toward Lasting Change
These realities make clear that water justice cannot be addressed in isolation. It requires approaches that are not only technically effective, but also inclusive, rights-based, and grounded in lived experience.
WILPF’s Environment Working Group members underline that women must not only be included in responding to water insecurity, but in shaping water governance at all levels from community-based initiatives to international diplomacy, in order to prevent insecurity before it arises.
This also calls for rethinking legal and political frameworks. Recognising nature, and water itself, as a rights-bearing entity, as seen in countries like Ecuador, could open new pathways for communities and women’s groups to defend water as a human right.
Ultimately, this means moving beyond short-term responses toward lasting change by supporting community-led solutions, addressing inequality and conflict, and ensuring that those most affected have real power in decision-making.
These challenges are global. From communities facing acute scarcity to countries grappling with ageing infrastructure and pollution, water insecurity is an issue that crosses borders and contexts.
On this World Water Day, the reflections from WILPF’s Environment Working Group offer both a warning and a way forward. Real change will not come from top-down solutions alone, but from sharing knowledge, shifting power, and working in solidarity with women and girls on the frontlines.
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