Gender Mainstreaming

Women and Water in Rural Kenya

Everywoman-Women and
the Politics of Water- Part 1

Everywoman-Women and
the Politics of Water- Part 2

Women and Water -
a Video by Water For People

Gender and Access to
Clean Water, Tanzania

Gender mainstreaming is the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally (gender equality) and inequality is not perpetuated.

Key components:

Recognising that no development activity is gender neutral.
Recognising that women and men have different needs and that development activities can affect them differently.
Understanding that women and marginalised people tend to have more limited access to information and more limited opportunities to participate, unless specific measures are taken to address these limitations.
Facilitating the direct participation of both women and men in all activities, as beneficiaries, as stakeholders, as managers, etc.
Ensuring there is appropriate benefit and positive outcomes from activities for women as well as men.
Integrating a gender perspective into all phases of planning cycles.
Strengthening the (political) will to achieve gender equality and equity, at the local, national, regional and global levels.
Incorporating a gender perspective into the planning processes of all partners.

Guiding Principles for the Gender Mainstreaming Strategy Framework

Ownership and sustainability

By bringing to light the differences in the ways in which women and men experience water and sanitation in cities, this Framework aims at raising awareness among local actors, practitioners and operators of the need to respond to these experiences, thus engendering ownership and sustainability of projects by all stakeholders at community level. The Framework recognizes that participation of both women and men in planning and decision making processes are the key elements for ownership and sustainability of water and sanitation projects at community level.

Empowerment and Efficiency

The GMSF will build capacities for both women and men to allow them to participate effectively in the planning of water and sanitation projects and to use their talents and/or their time through volunteerism to fully contribute in the implementation at all levels. A key element in achieving efficiency is to recognize and enable the specific contributions of women in water and sanitation projects at community level. UNHABITAT’s commitment to the demand-led approach must translate into people being empowered so as to be able to make informal decisions.

Equity

From the perspective of the Framework, women and men, irrespective of their status must participate as equals in decision making, priority setting and resource allocation processes. A key practical means of realizing this principle is to ensure that sex-disaggregated data is used as the basis for planning and service delivery.

Partnership

Water and sanitation challenges in African and Asian cities are increasingly complex and require partnership and shared responsibilities between the public, private, and civil sectors. In implementing its GMSF, UN-HABITAT will work in close partnership with multi stakeholders’ forums comprising members from local authorities and civil society. Dialogue, and consensus, active and genuine participation in collective decision making, will characterize this partnership and will be based on the above principles.

Partnership between development agencies and the donor community is also essential for mobilizing sufficient financial and technical resources to meet set goals and to affect a real change at the grassroots level. Funds allocated for the gender mainstreaming should be sufficient to go beyond research and workshops into concrete projects with demonstrable impact on their lives.

Field experiences


RSR Project 790 WaSH program in Rural Bangladesh	RSR Project 128 Safe water supply for Fayaco, Senegal	RSR Project 767 Access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene