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Gendered poverty alleviation is an important aim of many governmental and non-governmental irrigation agencies. This paper argues that the contribution of irrigation agencies to poverty alleviation is optimal if agencies target their support, and vest rights to newly developed irrigated land and water primarily in poor women and men. It is shown that the often-assumed trade-off between poverty alleviation and production growth probably does not exist. Further, agencies themselves play a preponderant role in including or excluding poor women and men in respect of rights in irrigated land and water. This role is especially strong in public irrigation, the focus of this paper. Evidence on the role of public irrigation agencies in allocating irrigated land and water rights is reviewed. Irrigated land is allocated through the site selection of infrastructural intervention, with or without changes in land tenure in the command area. Inclusion and exclusion occur implicitly through three principles of water rights allocation: on the basis of co-investments in infrastructure, on the basis of household composition, and on the basis of type of land rights.