Women, Water and Dignity: Voices from Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent

December 9 @ 11:30 am - 1:30 pm UTC+0

Virtual Side Event – UN Water Conference (2026)

Convened by: The Inclusivity Project and the Global Forum of Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent (GFoD) and partners

Registration link: https://theinclusivityproject-org.zoom.us/j/83390821185

Background

Women and girls from Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent (CDWD) experience inequalities in particularly acute ways. Access to water and sanitation are often reinforced by intersecting forms of caste, descent, racial, ethnic, territorial and gender discrimination that systematically shape access, opportunity, and participation.

Discrimination can determine who can access a water source, where they can live, which services are available to their communities, and whether they can participate in decisions about water and natural resources. Where water is unavailable within the household, women and girls frequently carry a disproportionate responsibility for collecting, transporting, storing and managing water. This can increase unpaid care work, limit opportunities for education and decent work, and expose women and girls to harassment, violence and risks to their safety and dignity including during water collection and sanitation work.

Climate change, environmental degradation and disasters further intensify these inequalities, particularly for communities living in marginalized, informal, rural or environmentally vulnerable areas where these communities are disproportionately located.

Rationale

The event will bring the voices and lived experiences of women from CDWD including Dalit, Roma, Quilombola, Osu and Haratine communities into the global water discussion. Rather than viewing water access only as an infrastructure or poverty issue, the event seeks to examine water through a gender equality, intersectional lens and produce a concise set of community-led recommendations on women, water and dignity, to inform, shape and influence global policy on SDG 6.

Speakers

The event will bring together representatives of UN human rights mechanisms, international organisations, civil society networks and diplomatic missions, alongside women leaders and rights advocates from Dalit, Roma, Quilombola, Osu and Haratine communities across South Asia, Europe, Latin America and Africa. Through an exchange of institutional perspectives and lived experiences, the discussion will highlight the intersecting discrimination shaping women’s and girls’ access to water and sanitation and advance community-led recommendations for more inclusive, gender-responsive and rights-based water policies.

Key Discussion Questions

How do caste, descent, racial, and gender discrimination affect women’s and girls’ access to water and sanitation?
What does lack of safe and accessible water mean for women’s health, safety, dignity, unpaid care work and economic opportunities?
How do climate change, environmental degradation and disasters affect the rights, livelihoods, safety and dignity of marginalized communities, especially women and girls?
Who makes decisions about water resources and investments? How can women from CDWD communities become meaningful decision-makers rather than simply beneficiaries?
What concrete actions should governments, UN agencies, donors and other stakeholders take to ensure water policies are gender-responsive, non-discriminatory and inclusive and aligned with SDG 6 acceleration and global water governance reforms?