Conclusions on Gender Dimensions

Projects to supply drinking water, improve sanitation and protect drinking water resources have both functional and developmental aims. Functional aims are that the quantity and quality of water resources are maintained, the water supplies and waste disposal systems function well, the environment is protected, and conditions and practices of environmental sanitation and hygiene are improved.

Such projects can also have more fundamental, developmental aims. In that case they not only improve local conditions and practices, but by the way they work with the people they also strengthen the latter's capabilities to bring about and preserve these changes, improve their living conditions and stimulate the undertaking of new development activities in their homes and communities.

Development goals are realized when the projects do not make thingsfor the people, but when improvements are as much as possible made with them and by them. Projects which treat people as dependents and passive beneficiaries unavoidably create dependency, while projects that recognize people as the local decision makers and managers of their environment enhance their capabilities to make and sustain their own improvements, either independently, or as partners in the more complex projects which combine a number of actors.

In this development process, men and women each have their own distinctive tasks, responsibilities and authority. This is also clear in the water and sanitation sector. Women and men have their own patterns and interests in the selection and use of water sources, in environmental sanitation and in the use of the land surrounding the water sources. In the homes, the expertise, felt needs and dealings with various aspects of water, sanitation and hygiene are gender-specific as well. Socialization, whereby boys and girls each get familiar with the accepted patterns of their own sex, starts at an early age.

Initially, it has been assumed that women and girls are only concerned with water use and hygiene inside the house, so that they have been mainly involved in water and sanitation projects as passive target groups for hygiene education. More research on how tasks and responsibilities are divided amongst the sexes has shown that in reality the situation is much more complex, and that both men, women and children are involved in, and have specific knowledge, tasks and requirements on water resources, water supply and environmental sanitation in the house, the neighbourhood, the village and the surrounding area ( Battaglino, 1990; Rocherleau, 1992; Donelly-Roark, 1989; Wijk, 1985).

It has been found further that focusing on women and children as audiences, rather than planners and actors, and forgetting the specific responsibilities and behavioural needs of men, reduces the effectiveness of technology projects and hygiene education programmes in the sector. The number of projects which apply a more gender-sensitive approach, involving men and boys and women and girls as distinct actors and managers is now gradually increasing (Wakeman, 1995).

There is yet another reason for dealing more carefully with gender issues in the water sector. Since projects in the water sector are typical community projects, which can only have an impact when they have the support and participation of the community at large, the insight is growing that both women and men need to be involved. A large amount of qualitative and quantitative evidence exists that bringing the women in has benefits for the project service as well as for the women themselves, but also that care has to be executed not to bypass the men and overburden the women (Chachage Ct a!., 1990; Hannan-Andersson, 1990; IRC, 1991; IRC and PROWWESS, 1992; NAC, 1991; Wijk, 1985; Yacoob and Walker, 1991.

Moreover, gender-based roles and relationships are not static. Project accounts show ample opportunities for men and women to fill new positions and effectively clothe them with new, yet not completely alien, responsibilities and power. For example, cases are numerous where the chairmanship in a water committee, as a position of authority, has gone to a man, but the position of treasurer, requiring trust, to a woman.

The drawbacks which women face when it comes to taking part in village activities and taking up local functions do, however, require that within this gender-specific approach, specific efforts are made to overcome the constraints, whereby the women themselves can often give useful suggestions on how this can be done.

A gender-sensitive approach thus takes into account the existing roles and relationships between the sexes, but also builds up new capacities in both men and women, which contribute to more effective projects as well as a more equitable distribution of work, power and benefits.