BONEX PRIMA project’s main aim is to provide practical and adapted tools, examine concrete and context-adapted technological innovations, enhance policies and governance, and facilitate WEFe Nexus practical implementation that balances the social, economic, and ecological trade-offs.

To achieve such an ambitious goal, within BONEX, gender mainstreaming has been identified as a key transversal priority throughout the implementation of the project activities, with also relevance to the inclusive multi-actor approach and transdisciplinary orientation of the project.

BONEX interventions of specific WEFe solutions, as well as communication and dissemination activities, are to be examined as regards their impact on gender and minorities. A specific task on Gender has been included in the workplan of the project to ensure that gender mainstreaming is effectively applied in all stages of the project.

In addition, BONEX is aligned with:

• The Union for Mediterranean (UfM) Water Agenda which recognises the WEFe nexus concept as the key to ensuring human well-being, reducing poverty and contributing to sustainable development, and the interlinks between water, food, energy, and ecosystems (including GHG), which could both negatively and positively affect one another, and the promising role of Nexus as a tool to consider synergies, the trade-off and cross-cutting issues such as gender, stakeholder engagement, rights, poverty, and transboundary cooperation.
• Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) principles which consider the support of Gender Equality by all partners, not only in demonstration developments but also in near-to-market and decision-making activities. The pictures below show the work performed on the frame of the EU project RRI Toolkit on what means Gender Equality in RRI terms and how to introduce it in your daily work:

RRI Toolkit (https://rri-tools.eu/gender-equality

As previously mentioned, there is a specific task on Gender mainstreaming and management within BONEX project. The main objectives of this task are to challenge gender stereotypes and to reinforce the involvement of women in science and research, technological developments, marketing and management activities; and to achieve gender balance in our project and the partners’ teams, encouraging consortium members to implement gender equality measures in their organizations.

By the end of the project a Gender Action Report will be delivered, documenting the extent to which actions promoting gender equality have been performed throughout the project.

The activities to be carried out in the frame of the project have been organised as follows:

• Assessment of the balance between women and men in the project team implementing project activities, at all levels, in the RWG and DP Local Steering Groups, and the speakers/participants invited to the BONEX events.
• Establish a Gender Committee composed of representatives of all partners to make sure that gender dimension is fully acknowledged in every single activity and product released from the project to resolve stereotypes when appeared, considering gender dimension when analysing social relations, roles, and norms. The Gender Committee has been recently established. The team is of 29 members, representing all project partners and the Third Party, from which 55.2% are women.

• Dissemination of the gender activities and results, combined with gender equality advocacy campaigns within the project sector. Advocating for gender equality alliances, such as the Women Empowerment Principles, helps promote good practices in the research and innovation field. For this purpose, examples of successful women working in this field will also be showcased.

To maximise the impact of BONEX in the MedRegion and beyond, BONEX foresees approaching several key target groups with different levels of engagement in BONEX project activities. The three groups are: 1) Local DP Steering Groups; 2) Regional Working Groups (RWGs) and 3) BONEX Community of practice.

A targeted Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation Strategy has been developed for this purpose, including interviews, surveys, the organisation of demonstration and policy workshops, and a final international conference. Special attention will be given to involving and reaching women to be well represented in the surveys and events, as they are the primary group negatively affected by unbalanced WEFe practices as an increased quantity and quality of water in agriculture “leads to [women’s] participation in food production and the manifestation of their agency” (FAO, 2018)⁸.

BONEX promotes gender-sensitive policies and development for areas where women are employed as cheap farm labour or food processing. Demonstration Pilots have been selected to ensure that problematic constellations, such as gender or inequalities, are addressed. Women’s interests and views will be considered in the NBPs development, and their presence will be ensured in all project activities, decision-making bodies, and stakeholder target groups.