Linking Women to the Main Canal: Gender and irrigation management

The objective of this paper is to identify the intersections between irrigation approaches and gender approaches. It will be argued that attempts to make irrigation engineers and managers (and consequently their policies, programmes and projects) more gender sensitive are destined to fail when gender interests and needs are not translated into water terms. The task of gender specialists is not limited to pointing out how and where irrigation projects have (negatively) affected women; they also have to provide creative and workable solutions and alternatives that can be easily understood and adopted by irrigation planners~and managers. At the same time, it should be realised that a gender analysis of irrigation management may lead to a reassessment of irrigation goals and objectives, as well as of the~strategies to achieve those objectives.