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Since 2000, the government of Burkina Faso has adopted a reform of the system of management of water infrastructure that supplies drinking water to rural and semi-urban areas. The new frameworks prescribed in this context aim in particular to institutionalize the accountability of the system’s users through associations of water users. In theory, diversity and gender parity are promoted in the composition of these associations. They are presented as principles that limit the exclusion of women from this new social and political space, and that allow women to legitimately access positions of decision-making. This article shows that these principles collide with gender norms, and that as such, women remain confined to subordinate roles within these new associations.