The approach of this short literature review is to look firstly at what the literature has to say about wider social impacts of "investing in watershed services" (IWS) projects or programs and, secondly, to examine more specifically the gender issues. The term IWS is used in this paper as a convenient shorthand while realizing that this is a controversial term and that there is a case for using other terms such as "payments for watershed services", "reciprocal arrangements in watershed service provision" or "compensation for provision of watershed services." In the interest of brevity, this discussion is not entered into except to say that the term IWS is used here in a broad and inclusive way similar to "IWS-like schemes" as used in the Bellagio Conversations (Asquith & Wunder 2008)
