Ten "Golden Rules" for a Gender Approach in Drinking Water and Sanitation Programmes

1 Tailor information to all audiences

Make sure that policies and strategies are in place in projects and programmes to ensure that information flows freely and reaches all women and men concerned, including minority groups and the poorest, directly or through representation. Keep in mind that different groups use different channels and differ in literacy, language skills and areas of interest.

2 Gender and poverty analysis

Ensure that baseline information required to formulate water and sanitation services, programmes and projects is gender specific. In other words, make sure that for every major demographic, socio-economic and cultural group, data are gathered, recorded and analysed separately by sex. A gender focus is needed in every stage of the development process. One must always ask how a particular activity, decision or plan will affect men differently from women, and some women or men differently from other women and men. When planning it is important to include indicators for measuring these impacts on different groups based on the data collected for monitoring and evaluation purposes.

3 Designing and planning WASH programmes

Ensure that people in communities can participate equally and have a say in the way that WASH programmes, policies and strategies are design and planned. This means thinking about a number of different sectors within a society including women and men, poor and better off, younger and older, etc. Depending on the situation, this may require specific measures, time allocations and budgets to reach and include these groups (e.g. meetings with specific groups at their places of work, mapping exercises). Planners and managers should ensure, and collect evidence to show, that women and men (including the poorest) have been able to voice their interests, and that all groups have been involved in mutually agreed decisions about WASH services: type, design and facility location, and arrangements for local maintenance, management and financing.

4 Organizations

Determine [e.g. through setting minimums in bylaws] that a proportion of members of planning and management organizations are women. Enable women and men from different groups to choose their own representatives on the basis of suitability for various tasks and the trust they place in them. For women and representatives of minority groups to participate equally, extra measures are needed, such as training and education. Promote the idea of women being chosen for financial positions. Help to establish locally agreed rules and procedures for representatives to account for their work regularly to those who have chosen them.

5 Hygiene education

Involve women and girls as planners, change agents and managers, not simply as passive audiences. However, avoid overburdening one group with responsibility for change. Develop hygiene programmes especially for men to address their own responsibilities and practices as well as the gender relations that affect health and hygiene. Gender-blind hygiene promotion often gives women and girls more work, fails to address male control of resources and overlooks the fact that young women often cannot change the behaviour of elders, or male relatives or go against the views of older female relatives on hygiene issues.

6 Training and employment

Make sure that both sexes are trained for technical, managerial and hygiene tasks. Adapt training to the requirements of women (place, methods, and duration) and minority groups. Achieve an equitable division in paid and unpaid jobs as well as jobs with a higher and lower prestige.

7. Means for improvements

Ensure that credit, materials and skills for making water/sanitation/hygiene improvements are available to both women and men. Remember that access to water and sanitation is also a right for the poorest people in the community. Make sure that the means of improvement are also accessible for the poor and the sick. Link water and sanitation projects with livelihood approaches and financial programmes (micro credits etc.).

8. Gender-sensitivity and skills

Support agency staff and management, as well as staff in training institutions, to carry out a participatory analysis of their own experiences and interests, so that they become aware of why gender is important, the benefits of practicing a gender approach in all aspects of their work, and are better able to help others to develop this awareness.

9. Staffing

Employ staff of both sexes and different ages, as well as from different ethnic and socio-economic groups and equip them to deal with gender issues and for other tasks. A more balanced representation in staffing highlights diversity and equality in an organisation and their benefits, and achieves a general improvement in performance by bringing in different competencies and perspectives, as needed in dynamic area such as water and sanitation.

10. Communication and accountability

Make sure appropriate channels are in place to have regularly two way communication between yourselves as leaders and managers, other stakeholders and the men and women who are end-users. Give an account of what decisions have been made and why. Communication can be either directly or through women’s and men’s representatives. However, local leaders do not necessarily (or may not be able to) represent the views of all members of their constituency. Also, be aware that not all channels are open to all community members.