Setting the Stage: Global Trends in Gender and Demand Responsive Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene

Wijk, Christine van and Francis, Jennifer ( ).
The Hague, The Netherlands, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre

This paper, delivered at an African workshop on gender in water supply and sanitation services sets out to explain what is meant by a gender-balanced approach, now seen as essential for sustainable development. Gender is defined as the socially and culturally determined roles and responsibilities of women and men, while sustainable development refers to projects delivering appropriate levels of benefits for an extended period after financial, managerial and technical assistance are terminated. Basic water, sanitation and hygiene services, developed as part of sustainable development to meet the demands of users, are therefore not dependent on continued external support for ongoing service delivery. Both water services and improved hygiene practices will only be sustained by users if they meet the five components of sustainability; namely, technical sustainability - user involvement in the choice of appropriate and affordable technology; social sustainability - user recognition of the benefits of water supply and sanitation provisions through stakeholder participation and gender sensitive approaches; financial sustainability - user management of financial resources; environmental sustainability - user water resources management; and institutional sustainability - user involvement as stakeholders in devolved power, capacity building, and local autonomy.

History has shown that supply-driven strategies with free services managed by central government agencies seldom work. Demand-responsive approaches involving users in the installation, cost and management of water supply and sanitation services are more successful in achieving sustainability. However, community participation in water supply and sanitation, begun in the mid 1970s, was synonymous with the participation of men and this biased gender approach negatively affected the sustainability of water supply and sanitation services and sustainable development in general since women's demands were not met ( as to the design and location of water points) and women's expertise, commitment and indigenous management functions were unrecognized. In the mid 1980s, although many projects began to take special measures to involve women in decision making and management of services, this greater focus on the participation of women was not without its risks: such as women getting more work without influence and compensation, men withdrawing from responsibilities once women became involved, and men bypassed in hygiene improvements.

It is evident that neither an exclusive focus on men nor on women will work and has led to ineffective and unsustainable services and behaviour change with undesirable effects on wider socio-economic development. There is a need for a more gender-balanced approach in service participation and management in which access to new information, division of work and the sharing of decision making, resources and benefits is divided equitably between men and women of different age groups, classes and ethnic and religious groups. Examples of this approach include a programme in Tanzania in which men spend more time on agriculture to give women more time for domestic tasks including water collection and hygiene, the government of Niger advising water committees to select and train female treasurers, a mixed management scheme for peri-urban water supplies in Malawi, and training both men and women as latrine masons in Lesotho. Equitable gender participation throughout the project cycle permits men and women to choose technologies, designs, maintenance, management and financing systems that best fit their needs and potential. An effective and sustained water and sanitation sector, a condition for and a part of wider socio-economic development, cannot be attained when one half of the population is either passed by or overburdened.