A/HRC/33/49 ensure that the needs of women are adequately addressed in the design, operation and maintenance of water supply systems. 57 Aquafed and the Women for Water Partnership have reported that they are working together with companies and water associations to develop employment policies that aim to increase the representation of women in their staff and to remove prejudices against female employees. 58 58. Women’s and girls’ voices are indispensable to ensuring that their needs are understood and prioritized, including on material and privacy requirements for menstrual hygiene management. In many cases, they are not consulted about the placement of water points and sanitation facilities, nor do they participate in designing the type of facility best suited to their needs or easiest for them to use, even though women and girls most often use these facilities and are primarily responsible for maintaining them. Including women and girls in making decisions about the design and location of facilities is even more relevant for those who have special needs because of a disability or their age or because they are pregnant, live in remote areas or are homeless, for example. Trans or gender nonconforming users of planned facilities must be given opportunities to participate. Some may find it useful to have access to a gender-neutral facility, while in other communities it may be acceptable for persons to simply use the toilet they feel most comfortable with. 59. Attempts to ensure women’s participation through laws or regulations, however, may not correspond to local customary norms and their implementation subsequently fails. Customary norms reflect cultural gender hierarchies and power relations within a community and may have a much bigger influence in practice. 59 This means that even when women participate, their actual influence on the governance of water and sanitation may still be very limited. States and development initiatives must actively identify, acknowledge and remove barriers to meaningful participation. The right to information is inextricably related to participation, since women are often not aware that they can participate. Education on how to be part of a participatory process and how to voice needs is indispensable. The non-governmental organization Armenian Women for Health and Healthy Environment organizes seminars, workshops, training sessions and projects to develop women’s leadership skills, for example.60 60. Women are sometimes unable to participate in meetings because of cultural norms against women speaking on their own behalf or cannot talk about sanitation and menstrual hygiene management needs because of taboos or social norms. For example, a recent study on Myanmar revealed that leadership and politics were strongly associated with masculinity, which is why women who do attend meetings rarely speak up. 61 A gender analysis lowers the risk of excluding women if special measures are taken accordingly, for example through specially targeted consultations such as women-only spaces. In carefully determining the location and meeting times and arranging transport, child care and translators, other barriers may be overcome. Any initiative that seeks to ensure the participation of women must also include a component of empowerment, including in economic terms, and address gender stereotypes. 57 58 59 60 61 16 Pakistan, National Drinking Water Policy (September 2009). Available from http://epd.punjab.gov.pk/system/files/National_Drinking_Water_Policy.pdf. AquaFed and others, submission to the Special Rapporteur. Anne Hellum, Ingunn Ikdahl and Patricia Kameri-Mbote, “Turning the tide: engendering the human right to water”, in Water is Life: Women’s Human Rights in National and Local Water Governance in Southern and Eastern Africa, Anne Hellum and others, eds. (Harare, Weaver Press, 2015), p. 68. Women for Water Partnership and UN-Women, Women as Agents of Change in Water: Reflections on Experiences from the Field (Driebergen, De Hoop and Koonig, 2015), pp. 28-29. Jasmine Burnley and others, “A case for gender-responsive budgeting in Myanmar”, Oxfam Briefing Papers (Oxfam, ActionAid, Care and Women’s Organisations’ Network, 2016), p. 6.