Bridging the Gender Participatory Gap in Water and Sanitation Rights Adjudication

This article critically examines the justifications, litigation strategies, adjudicatory mechanisms and implications for strengthening gender participatory processes in domestic enforcement of the separate but critically interlinked rights to basic water and adequate sanitation services. The article first examines how the lack of women's full, free and meaningful participation as key stakeholders both causes and contributes to gendered deprivation by examining three early leading jurisprudential examples from South Africa, , and . Employing the literature on principles of adjudication and the discourse on equality, gender and dignity, the concept of 'gender-responsive participatory justice' (GPJ) is then put forth as a flexible analytical and strategic tool to mitigate the ad hoc gender-sensitive considerations that remain wholly inadequate to guaranteeing equality and non-discrimination commitments in practice. In doing so, the article emphasizes the critical nexus between procedure and the substantive values and functions of these rights in the form of autonomy-based equality and agency-based dignity. In the final instance, this examination is operationalized by a preliminary applied discussion of how gender-responsive deliberative principles of participation and their accompanying values can be utilized by practitioners and policy-makers to ultimately pursue proactive ways of guaranteeing that women's participation becomes fully integrated in water and sanitation rights implementation.