Gender issues newsletter 4

July/August 1997

Greetings to Network members. This is the fourth Network Newsletter and we are proud to say that membership has been steadily growing since the first issue was sent out. The network started out with forty four members and has now a total of sixty one! This is partly due to the availability of the newsletter on the internet but more so due to your passing on of information to colleagues and friends. A special thanks is due to Peace Corps Morocco who passed on the network address to a group of women in Morocco. We received a touching letter from them thanking us for our efforts in promoting gender issues. They even went through the length of getting their letter translated into English. It is encouraging to know that the network is indeed reaching out!

Christine van Wijk and Jennifer Francis
Fax: 31-70-35 899 64
Email:general@irc.nl

Gender Issues Network at the Fourth Global Forum of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council
The Collaborative Council has announced of the Fourth Global Forum which will be held in Manila, Philippines from 3 to 7 November this year. The forum will be hosted by the Government of the Philippines and the Asian Development Bank.

The set-up of the Council meeting will be different in Manila in that instead of separate sessions of each working group, activities of the working groups would be presented in a sole plenary session. Other council activities which are not part of the working groups would have a special panel session. Lastly, display booths will be made available for working groups to present their documents, posters, films, videos...etc for others to review and appreciate.

The Gender Issues Network, which is a mandated activity of the Council will launch the revised edition of the UNDP/World Bank/PROWWESS publication on Women (now gender) in the sector and present a report on gender equity in education which is crucial to the sector’s effectiveness, efficiency and impacts. This report prepared by Maria Lucia Borba of IRC, examines how gender aspects are present in education and training programs as well as provide promising approaches that take gender into account. Apart from this, a Gender Booth will be set-up to exhibit materials in gender.

For more information on the Fourth Global Forum, please contact: Secretariat for the WSS Collaborative Council. Fax: 41-22-791-4847.
Email: wirasinha@who.ch. Gender in Water Resources Management: Roles and Realities Revisited: An Updated Version of the 1995 edition of Participation of Women in Water Supply and Sanitation: Roles and Realities ......soon to be available!

The confined nature and disbalanced distribution of the world's stock of freshwater and the growing and competing demands on this stock necessitate us to manage this resource with more sense and care. Attention to the human aspects of the use, development and management of freshwater has become common. Attention to the gender aspects is far less prevalent. Gender is still often interpreted as women's involvement. Roles and responsibilities of men and the changing relationships between males and females regarding work, influence and benefits are not generally addressed.

This book on gender in the water sector is the follow-up of the earlier publication of IRC, PROWWESS and UNDP, Participation of Women in Water Supply and Sanitation: Roles and Realities, which is sold out. In the revised edition a number of sections that are still valid have been kept. However, the text has been placed within the context of overall water resources management and has been made gender- instead of women-specific. The book has been expanded with recent literature and so gives an overview of gender developments in water supply and sanitation in the context of water resources management from 1980 to 1997.

Content wise the book first gives an overview of what has been happening at the policy level on integrated water resources management. This is linked to indigenous water resources management which has a strong gender element. The book presents a simplified framework for gender analysis which can be used in rapid and participatory assessments and in planning. It then summarises how and to what effect the gender principles on water resources management have been operationalised in the water supply sector. The gender analysis framework is used to see how in practice work, influence and project benefits are divided between women and men of different classes and backgrounds. This is done for water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion. Finally a description is given on how institutions incorporate gender in their organisation and work.

The book is a co-publication of IRC and the UNDP/World Bank Program on Water Supply and Sanitation. It is a review in the context of the UNDP/WB work on gender, demand response and sustainability, and also a contribution to the work of the gender network (GENNET) of the Collaborative Council.

UNESCO Regional Workshop on "Women's Participation in Water Management" Pretoria, 24-26 November 1997
Following the recommendations of the Fourth World Conference on Women, UNESCO's is giving priority to reinforcing the crucial role of African Women in sustainable development.

Within that framework, UNESCO's International Hydrological Program and the UNESCO Nairobi Office are organising a workshop for 13 English-speaking African countries (South Africa, Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, Angola, Tanzania and Uganda). The topics of the workshop are:

Invited to the seminar are representatives from Ministries of Water Affairs and the Status of Women from countries listed above, as well as national, international and non-governmental organisations.

For more information contact:
Ms. Alice Aureli,
UNESCO IHP Program.

Fax: 33-1-45 6858 11
Email:a.aureli@unesco.org

Translation of the Gender Sourcebook for Water and Sanitation Projects prepared by Wendy Wakeman, UNDP/World Bank Water and Sanitation Program/PROWWESS, 1995" into Hindi
A local NGO in the Himalayas named "AYKESAK" is translating the first gender sourcebook of the Gender Working Group into Hindi. This NGO works with water and sanitation projects and was introduced to the sourcebook during a training workshop. They found is so useful that they decided to translate it for wider use in local projects.

Women and Water Program of the International Irrigation Management Institute (IIMI), Sri Lanka
The IIMI's work on gender issues has recently broadened its focus from "purely" irrigation management to the multiple uses of water. They are taking therefore a more integrated approach to water issues generally, and water and gender specifically, than they have before. Two new publications on gender have been published by 1) Zwarteveen and 2)Zwarteveen and Neupane. They show that in Burkina Faso, productivity is higher when women also have access to land and water. In Nepal, women turned their exclusion from membership into an advantage. They used more water and contributed less to maintenance that they should have. But in the end these imbalances may threaten sustainability, since female farming is increasing.

For more information contact:
Mr. Doug Merrey,
Acting Coordinator,
IIMI Women and Water Program,
IIMI,
P.O. Box 2075,
Colombo,
Sri Lanka.

Email:d.merrey@cgnet.com

Gender Meeting of the Global Water Partnership
On 12 August 1997, the Global Water Partnership in Stockholm is holding a forum on gender and water.

For those interested please contact:
Ms. A. Kusum,
Global Water Partnership.

Fax: (46) 8-698 5627
Email: gwp@sida.se

Questions of Difference - PRA, Gender and Environment, Irene Guijt, IIED
This is a video which gives a comprehensive PRA overview and three case studies which could stimulate discussion and lead to exercises. It shows how women and men use, manage and are affected by their natural environment which is strongly influenced by their socially-determined roles and responsibilities. It also shows how Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) can help development workers explore the links between gender and the environment, enabling more effective work with local communities.

For more information contact:
The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

Fax: (44) 171-388 2826
Email: sustag@iied.org

Below you will find the executive summary of GENNET's report to the Council. Comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council GEN NET - Gender Issues Network Report to the Fourth Global Forum - Executive Summary
During its existence as a working group the Gender group, coordinated by Wendy Wakeman published two Gender Sourcebooks, one for the operational and one for the policy level. Members of the group, then forty-four in number, shared gender materials for these documents. Through their membership of the other working groups, several members introduced or strengthened gender aspects in the work of these groups. Copies of the source books were made available to some 2,500 key organisations and staff working in the water supply and sanitation sector and continue to be available through the UNDP/World Bank Water and Sanitation Program.

After Barbados the group changed from a working group to a network. Its membership has grown to a total of now 61 members. They come from 29 countries, 21 in the South, 8 in the North. Continents represented are Africa (8), Asia (16), the Caribbean (3), Europe (6), North America (10), the Pacific (1) and South America (3). GEN NET members are female (44) and male (14) while three members have been asked to yet provide this information. After October 1997, Christine van Wijk, with assistance from Jennifer Francis, both at IRC, took on coordination until 'Manila'.

Between the Third and Fourth Global Meeting the Network has distributed four newsletters to its members and through GARNET to the coordinators of other networks and working groups. Contacts with organisations and persons working on gender in related sectors have been expanded. Links exist with the International Institute for Environmental Development in London, the International Irrigation Management Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the Department of Irrigation and Water and Soil Conservation at the Agricultural University of Wageningen, the Global Water Partnership in Stockholm and the International Forum for Transport and Rural Development in London.

Operationalisation of the principles of Dublin and Rio in a gender-specific way has been documented in "Gender in Water Resources Management, Water Supply and Sanitation: Roles and Realities Revisited". This book, about to be published by the UNDP/World Bank Program and IRC, is being presented in Manila and will be available in IRC's Technical Paper series. Another contribution to the forum will be a report on gender and education in the water supply and sanitation sector.

Some members of the network continued to serve on Collaborative Council Working Groups. Information on attention paid to gender was solicited by means of a questionnaire. From 7 to 10 October some of the network members will meet in The Hague, The Netherlands. The meeting has a dual purpose. The first is to participate in the formulation of a field program of the UNDP/WB Program to be started after the Manila Global Forum in collaboration with interested countries and bilateral and international agencies. The field program could comprise a series of participatory assessments of already functioning water supply and sanitation services. These will test the assumption, already proved in a desk study , that there is a positive relationship between the degree of demand-responsiveness and gender-sensitiveness of a water project and the level of sustainability and benefits of its services, without excluding or disadvantaging either women or men. The assessment will also look into factors, which encourage that sector institutions become more demand-responsive and gender-sensitive in the planning and establishment of such services.

The second purpose is to review the various working group papers prepared for the fourth global forum on their gender aspects, highlighting and where required strengthening these aspects and putting suggestions to the Collaborative Council on follow-up of gender issues after 'Manila'. Possible follow-up activities could include the further regionalisation of the network and the expansion of working relationships with sector ministries, departments, utilities and boards. Regional network coordination will preferably be located in one centre in each continent of the South and be associated with some resources for regional network activities. The association of each coordinating sector centre in the South with a partner centre in the North can facilitate the sharing of knowledge, capabilities and contacts on gender and water supply, sanitation and hygiene.

For many implementing organisations gender is still an abstract and difficult concept, as yet often confused with women's participation. These organisations would greatly benefit from a simplified gender analysis tool that they can easily apply in planning and evaluation. Field application will also be facilitated by the wider use of participatory tools and training on gender developed as part of the SARAR and PRA field methods for stakeholder participation. Bringing in gender angles in several of the earlier tools would further the participatory instruments.

Updated 31/01/03

Maintained by f.odhiambo@lboro.ac.uk and j.fisher1@lboro.ac.uk