Mahabuba Lima, Mashfiqus Salehin, Md Arif Chowdhury, Md Hasibul Hasan, Mohammad Jobayer Hossain and Sujit Kumar Bala (2025)
Women’s participation in water management institutions (WMOs) is seen as a vehicle for women empowerment and gender equity. However, the extent of women’s participation is variable over space, mediated by social, religious, and ethnic variables. Moreover, mere participation and membership do not guarantee women’s active involvement in decision making and hence does not necessarily empower them. Whether women have the authority to opine on water management aspects and have them reflected in management and implementation decisions is more important for empowerment. In this paper, we investigate opportunities for women’s empowerment via participation in WMOs in water insecure southwest coastal Bangladesh. Using qualitative research tools and methods, we examine the extent and nature of women’s participation in WMOs and the factors that affect the level of participation in varying hydrological settings. Drawing upon important empowerment indicators across the domains of agency, resources, and achievement, we contend that a set of contextual variables encompassing both socio-political as well as natural processes influence women’s effective participation and empowerment outcomes. If participation would be translated into empowerment will depend particularly on the positions women hold in the WMOs and to what extent the positions are influenced by other powerful members of the community. The study clearly shows empowerment is achievable through intensive water security programs to ensure women’s effective participation, supported by leadership enhancing programs, and to ensure fair selection in the WMOs by breaking the stereotypes of elite influence. Institutional coordination through inclusion of women’s empowerment team in the mainstream government or non-government institutions is important to facilitate, monitor and evaluate women’s empowerment activities. Apart from the local power structures, socio-political context, and institutions, it is important to pay attention to geographical locations with diverse water security concerns. Well-maintained and functioning water control structures against complex and difficult environmental stresses provide opportunities for high empowerment. Lastly, frameworks for measuring empowerment in relation to water resources management are useful in that they allow systematic examination of different drivers and impact pathways for important empowerment dimension and prioritization of areas for interventions.
