"Gender is a social, not a biological concept," said keynote speaker Barbara Schreiner, a representative from South Africa's Department of Water Affairs and Forestry. Schreiner said that before it is possible to talk about gender policies, an understanding of what gender means is essential.

"We need to understand gender issues and roles in order to change them," she said. "Gender equity is the process of being fair to men and women.and equity leads to equality."

But even when gender is taken into account in making policy, what seems like a success story on paper does not always reflect the reality on the ground.

In one United Nations (UN) project in Africa, the UN insisted that at least two women be involved in each water project. The aim was to give women more control in the management of water projects that directly influenced their communities. Instead, the two women that were involved in each project were often relegated to such roles as cleaning the pumps or keeping the animals and the children away from wells. The data on inclusion of women may have looked good on paper, but the policy didn't pan out in practice.

But there are success stories. South Africa has made progress in increasing the participation of women at all levels in water management. Government representatives attribute this increase to two things: a constitution that states that gender equality is a basic right, and the monitoring of gender equality by specific institutions.

Mike Muller, director of South Africa's Ministry of Water Affairs and Forestry, said that gender equality is even taken into account when high-powered international companies bid for contracts.

"When companies tender for a bid, the number of women on the board of that company helps to determine whether that company gets the contract or not," said Muller.

Trinidad and Tobago has had its own success story.

"All of our community water projects have been started and run by women, and that is why they work!" said Robert Salandy, Deputy Director of the Land and Water Development Division of the Ministry of Food Production and Maritime Resources.

But while Trinidad and Tobago can boast of this success, and most agree that women need to play a greater role in water management at all levels, some water experts stressed the importance of including men in the gender discussion.

"Gender is not just about including more women," said a delegate from Sweden.

Speaking at a press conference later in the day, one of the co-chairs of the event, Diane M. Quarless, Jamaica's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, said that 70 percent of the students at universities in her country are women.

"There are actually programs that address the marginalization of the male," she said, which brought chuckles from the audience. But according to some experts, excluding men from programs that empower women is no joke.

"What needs to be done is to empower men.the entire (gender) policy is misguided," said Bhanu R. Neupane, a representative of the UNESCO World Water Assessment Program. "The men need to be educated (too). It isn't the women who are beating up other women for not bringing water home."

Neupane applauded the programs that educate women, but would like to see men being educated at the same time.

"We are messing up the social fabric if we educate only the women," he said, warning that by focusing only on educating the women, the men may begin to feel less empowered because their wives know more than them.

Neupane also said that men need to be taught that by helping women in traditional female roles they are not giving up their manhood.

"By working in the kitchen, I am not a woman," he said.

Another point that came up at the meeting was the decentralization of water management and the inclusion of the people who face the worst water problems-the poor.

"Poverty doesn't relate to stupidity," said Schreiner. "Poor men and women do have voices, they know what they want to say."

Behind the policy prescriptions that resulted from the meeting, delegates made sure that a human face was put on the issue. One delegate from Brazil reminded attendees why it was so important to address the issue of gender equality in water issues. She spoke of an arid region of Brazil where women walk eight kilometers a day to fetch water, explaining that when a woman from this region turns 65, she will have spend one-third of her life getting water. By freeing women from this labor, she said, they can do other things that will benefit themselves and their communities. And those pushing to address gender issues when it comes to water management agree that helping people help themselves is what it is all about.