AQUASTAT - FAO's Global Information System on Water and Agriculture

    Documents

    A variety of documents, case studies, tools and methodologies, which are all by some means relevant to gender issues in water statistics and specifically related to agricultural water management and irrigation practices, are here presented.


    FAO case studies

    • The role of women in agricultural water management - Phase 2 . Mainstreaming gender in data on agricultural water management. Case study 2006 (french)

    This paper presents the results of a follow-up project in Algeria and Tunisia on the development of gender-sensitive indicators related to the role of women in agricultural water management. The paper summarizes the results of the "Phase 1" project, then presents the results of two studies conducted in Algeria and Tunisia on institutional level actors dealing with agricultural water management and national-level sex-disaggregated data. Most importantly, the paper reflects on the efforts to mainstream gender in statistics relative to agricultural water management, the limitations in collecting this data and finally offers various recommendations to reduce the gaps related to gender in water statistics.

    • The role of women in agricultural water management - Results of a pilot project to develop gender-sensitive indicators. Case study 2014 (french)

    This report describes the result of a pilot project in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia on the development of gender-sensitive indicators related to the role of women in agricultural water management. The study shows that it was not possible to have gender-disaggregated data at national level, especially related to water and agriculture. Therefore the information gathered cannot yet be included into the AQUASTAT database, which contains national-level data. However, despite this constraint, the project certainly played an important role with regards to the reflection on gender-sensitive indicators and some proposals on gender-sensitive indicators are given in the document. (Document in French)

    • Survey on Gender Equality: Kagera TAMP Project. Survey 2014

    This survey is useful to identify and assess the activities within a given project or programme that contribute to FAO’s Gender Equality objectives. The survey allows a thorough and comprehensive evaluation of the gender related work that has been done in a project or programme and enables the substantiation and the accountability of this work. The survey is also useful to report on the weak points of gender related interventions and propose improvements. The completion of this questionnaire could be very useful for progress reports and final evaluations of projects so that the gender component becomes more visible and systematic in project documentation.

    • Water and the rural poor: Interventions for improving livelihoods in Asia. Case study 2014

    The first goal of this study is to understand the water and poverty linkages in rural Asia in order to provide guidance for policies and investments in innovative water interventions and to mobilize government and civil society support. The second goal is to contribute to interdisciplinary understanding of water and poverty linkages in an academic framework. Most data presented in this study comes from FAOSTAT and AQUASTAT. The study touches upon the significance of integrating a gender perspective in water interventions and policies.

    • Water and the rural poor: Interventions for improving livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. Case study 2008

    The first goal of this study is to understand the water and poverty linkages in rural Sub-Saharan Africa in order to provide guidance for policies and investments in innovative water interventions and to mobilize government and civil society support. The second goal is to contribute to interdisciplinary understanding of water and poverty linkages in an academic framework. Most data presented in this study comes from FAOSTAT and AQUASTAT. The study touches upon the significance of integrating a gender perspective in water interventions and policies.

    • Agricultural censuses and gender: Lessons Learned in Africa. Report 2005

    This document highlights lessons learned in Africa with regard to the integration of gender concerns into agricultural censuses and provides recommendations on how to further improve the integration of these concerns into agricultural data collection systems. The production and use of gender-disaggregated agricultural data has increased significantly in the past two decades. Nonetheless, challenges still remain as governments, development partners and international organizations continue to identify ways to harmonize the use of definitions and concepts, address complex gender issues, strengthen the capacities of data users and producers to address gender issues, improve user-producer collaborations, and secure funds for the production, analysis and presentation of sub-national data.


    FAO policies, guidelines and tools.

    • Questionnaire "Water and gender" intended for agricultural holdings with an irrigation system. Questionnaire 2016

    This questionnaire is an edited version of the original questionnaire that was developed and used as part of the "Phase 1" pilot project mentioned in the section "FAO case studies" above. Changes have been made since the objective of the original questionnaire was to focus only on women farm managers or family labour (wives or daughters) who are in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. This edited version would be useful to interview both women and men in multiple countries. (Document in French)

    • FAO policy on gender equality: Attaining food security goals in agriculture and rural development. Policy document 2013

    The purpose of this policy document is to provide FAO with a framework for guiding its efforts to achieve gender equality in all its technical work, and for assessing results; it calls on the whole Organization to contribute to these efforts. The policy specifies FAO’s goal and objectives related to gender equality and delineates an accountability structure for ensuring policy oversight and achievement of results. The document sets a number of Minimum Standards to reach gender equality goals, and the first two of these standards are: 1) All major FAO statistical databases incorporate sex-disaggregated data where relevant and available. In the short term, this will involve mining existing data sources – particularly household surveys – for sex-disaggregated statistics; in the longer term, efforts will be made to collect and disseminate additional sex-disaggregated data; 2) FAO invests in strengthening member countries’ capacity to develop, analyze and use sex-disaggregated data in policy analysis and programme and project planning and evaluation. In particular, technical support to in-country data collection activities, such as agricultural censuses and surveys, will promote the mainstreaming of gender issues, as indicated in the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics endorsed by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2010.

    • CEDAW, A tool for gender-sensitive agriculture and rural development policy and programme formulation. Guidelines 2013

    The purpose of these guidelines is to provide guidance on how FAO and national ministries of agriculture can support and use CEDAW (Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women) at the country level as a tool for policy development and programming to achieve equality between men and women in agriculture and rural development. These guidelines emphasize the importance of contributing to the collection, analysis and dissemination of sex and age disaggregate data in policy and programme formulation.

    • Passport to mainstreaming gender in water programmes: Key questions for interventions in the agricultural sector. Guidelines 2012

    The purpose of the passport is to support professionals in mainstreaming a gender perspective during planning, implementation and management of agricultural water management projects and programmes. This passport encourages in-depth surveys, reviews, interviews and collecting data, however it also provides a set of questions which can be used as a checklist when it is not possible to do in-depth analyses. The questions listed in the document will trigger the user to think of certain aspects he/she might otherwise not have taken into account. It will also help to identify the areas where additional efforts are necessary to make the project more gender sensitive and to focus the interventions on the priority areas. The document strongly encourages the review of existing data, focus groups discussions, interviews with leaders and a significant number of members of the households (both men and women) to obtain representative results and significant sex and age disaggregated data.

    The purpose of the Sourcebook is to act as a guide for practitioners and technical staff in addressing gender issues and integrating gender-responsive actions in the design and implementation of agricultural projects and programs. It speaks not with gender specialists on how to improve their skills but rather reaches out to technical experts to guide them in thinking through how to integrate gender dimensions into their operations. The Sourcebook aims to deliver practical advice, guidelines, principles, and descriptions and illustrations of approaches that have worked so far to achieve the goal of effective gender mainstreaming in the agricultural operations of development agencies. Module 6 (pages 229-256) focuses on gender mainstreaming in agricultural water management and Module 10 (pages 423-474) focuses on gender and natural resources management. In these modules, specific gender-sensitive indicators are presented for the monitoring and evaluation of the above-mentioned projects and policies: Table 6.1 on page 234 and Table 10.1 on page 430. At the end of the Sourcebook, Module 16 (page 675-728) on gender issues in monitoring and evaluation contains a Thematic Note 3 on setting gender-sensitive indicators and collecting gender-disaggregated data for measuring progress in gender-related targets. This section thoroughly shows what gender-sensitive indicators are, their importance and the reasons they should be used, and provides guidelines to properly design these indicators and to find the sources to verify them.

    • Socio-economic and gender analysis (SEAGA) programme: Gender-disaggregated data for agriculture and rural development.
      Guidelines 2013

    This package of facilitation materials, has been prepared to assist in the process of developing capacity of those involved in producing agricultural data and statistics. More precisely, it is intended to improve producers’ abilities to integrate a gender perspective in the design, collection, tabulation, analysis, interpretation and presentation of agricultural information. The guide contains several materials useful to facilitators planning and conducting a workshop on gender-disaggregated data (GDD) for agriculture and rural development, whether long or short, focusing on data tabulation and analysis or questionnaire design, or intended for more technical staff or decision-makers.

    • Socio-economic and gender analysis (SEAGA) programme: Irrigation sector guide. Guidelines 2001

    The purpose of the guide is to support participatory planning of irrigation schemes and the integration of socio-economic and gender issues in the planning process. The ultimate aim is to improve irrigation scheme performance, while strengthening the position of rural women and disadvantaged groups. The guide also focuses on the importance and the ways of collecting, reviewing and integrating sex and age disaggregated data in each project stages.

    • Agricultural censuses and gender considerations: Concepts and methodology. Guidelines 1999

    This paper aims to provide methodological guidelines to narrow the statistical gap as much as possible, avoiding the omission of women's contributions. It also proposes an innovative statistical process to highlight the contribution of small farms and small farm households. Annex 2 of the report contains the case study "Gender specific statistics and agricultural censuses in Tunisia and Benin" and Annex 3 the case study "National survey of rural households and formulation of gender-sensitive policies in Colombia".


    Other publications

    This document provides a path for professionals, researchers, development practitioners and government ministries to mainstream gender in their statistics on water. This technical paper is the first tool and output of a broader World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP)-financed project called “Gender-sensitive water monitoring, assessment and reporting”.

    The guideline aims to set universal standards for the collection of sex-disaggregated data related to water. It is envisaged that the methodology will be used and adapted to different regions, countries and by different users. It is therefore necessary to provide a framework for standardization of the quality of data, and the process through which it is collected. The purpose is also to ensure that the data and information collected are authentic and have been collected in an ethical manner, conforming to universal standards. The guideline seeks to make the methodology easy to use and adapt, so that it can be used widely.

    This questionnaire is one of the tools provided by the UN WWAP UNESCO Project on "Gender-sensitive water monitoring, assessment and reporting". It is an elaborate questionnaire which will guide users to collect sex disaggregated data relative to the following subjects: water governance, safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, decision-making and knowledge production, transboundary water resources management, water for industrial and agricultural uses.

    • Why gender matters in IWRM: A tutorial for water managers. Full resource document. CAP-NET, GWA 2014

    This is an updated edition of the report produced in 2006 (see last one below). It does not differ in its gender approach, but is updated with new developments, new insights and recently developed processes. Like the previous version, the chapters deal with different gender and water themes, explaining why smart water managers should mainstream gender in their work. But in this version, the 'how' question is addressed more thoroughly, as various tools, case studies, and references to useful websites and literature on promising practices have been included, as well as examples of evidence of impact.

    This case study describes the integration of women producers into agricultural investment programs in Zambia as well as how women's right to land influences women as it relates to the Irrigation Development Support Programme (IDSP) in Zambia. The study discusses the projects aim to develop irrigated agricultural land managed by smallholders, including emergent farmers and making sufficient water available to support large-scale commercial operations. It is comprised of two interlinked studies, the first in the internal paper "Integrating Women Producers and Their Organizations into Agricultural Investment Programmes in Zambia (and Mali)" and a follow-up study entitled "Women's Land Ownership and Compensation Study in Zambia".

    This case study aims to highlight, within the context of a Gender Pilot of the Peru Sierra Irrigation Project, how women's different needs were identified to facilitate their access to training and to increase their participation in the management of water users' organizations (WUOs). It follows the diagnostic participatory discussions around the importance for communities to include women in water management. In response to these diagnostics and subsequent discussions, the water users resolved to set specific targets for becoming more inclusive organizations, and shaped the content and timing of their activities to allow a greater number of women to participate. The document is divided into 6 titles, which include a background to the project, its achievements benefits and impacts and lessons learned.

    • Gender and water: Securing water for improved rural livelihoods - The multiple-uses system approach. IFAD Case Study 2012

    This review examines the impact of water-related projects on women, women’s role in managing water resources and the constraints women face in gaining access to water. It presents lessons learned in promoting women’s participation in decision-making for water management using experiences from several IFAD-supported water programmes and projects. It highlights the innovative activities and catalysts that have helped to address gender issues in water programmes and projects. And it offers recommendations on how to improve women’s access to water resources through equitable development and gender mainstreaming.

    The Guide is a reference document to assist water and gender practitioners and professionals as well as persons responsible for gender mainstreaming, and anybody else who is interested in the water sector. It is a compilation of newer resources – documents, papers, books, case studies, tools and toolkits - on gender mainstreaming in Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). The Guide also contains a chapter specifically on Gender and Irrigation and emphasizes the importance of gender-disaggregated data collection for gender mainstreaming in water management projects and policies.

    This tutorial is mostly aimed at people interested in or responsible for managing water resources. The tutorial shows how addressing gender can improve efficiency of water use and environmental sustainability. It also emphasizes how a gender approach can also improve social benefits and equity from use of water resources. An important part of a gender approach is the use and collection of sex-disaggregated data and the production of gender-sensitive indicators.