3.12 Gender, Water and Capacity Building

Introduction

Building the capacities of different stakeholders is essential for mainstreaming gender at all levels of the water sectors. Grassroots women often lack the capacity to participate in a meaningful way in the planning, implementation, and operation and maintenance of water resources, water supply and sanitation programmes. Water sector institutions are generally dominated by men at management levels. Well-directed capacity building programmes targeted for women are needed to alleviate this situation, while programmes targeted for men are needed to sensitise them to the specific needs of poor women.

However, capacity building needs to go beyond individuals. El-Awar (2003) defines capacity building as “a process by which individuals, groups, institutions, organisations and societies enhance their abilities to identify and meet development challenges in a sustainable manner.” In many countries, there is a need to strengthen institutional capacities in the water sectors. Many countries lack the capacity even to spend the budget allocated for water and sanitation programmes. In particular, institutional capacity building is needed for stakeholders in the water resources and sanitation sectors to translate policy intentions into concrete gender-sensitive programmes.

Capacity Building and Gender Mainstreaming in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)

The contemporary view of capacity building goes beyond the conventional perception of capacity building as training. It includes the creation of an enabling environment through policy frameworks, institutional reforms, and human resources development.

The concept of mainstreaming gender in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is gaining ground in the water sectors, raising the interest of government agencies, non-governmental organisations, donors and technical support agencies for supporting gender approaches. Nonetheless, the understanding of the concept of gender mainstreaming and the capacity to implement it in policies and within national and local organisations is very slow and requires a lot of effort and time.

Many water professionals have an engineering education, with little experience in incorporating gender and social equity approaches in their work. Therefore, capacity building provides concrete tools to integrate a gender perspective in their work, through using gender-sensitive socio-economic surveys and training methods.

Across the developing world, women have less access to formal education than men. As a result, women are under-represented at the institutional level, and grassroots women find it difficult to participate in decision-making or to take up paid operation and maintenance tasks. Well-designed capacity building programmes are needed to rectify this. Capacity building targeted for women at the grassroots level should be seen as a process rather than a one-time effort. It requires well-designed training programmes to develop skills that do not require literacy, are based on the needs expressed by the women, and provided by well-trained gender-sensitive trainers. Too often, the wrong people are trained in operation and maintenance, and the women who are trained are not given practical on-the-job training.

However, even when training programmes are well designed, the actual implementation of the training programmes needs to be given due attention. Programmes should be planned at a time and location convenient to women, and training material has to be appropriate and accessible for the trainees. In South Africa, to ensure proper maintenance of the water projects, Mvula Trust required that all water committees had to have at least 30 per cent women. The committee members received on-the-job training in maintenance, and had to be consulted when decisions were made on changes in design, location or technology. This process was adopted by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry.

Key Actors

Several key actors play a pivotal role in capacity building to mainstream gender in water sectors. At the international level, international organisations, agencies, donors and NGOs play an important role in providing support in creating the required enabling environment for integrated water resources management. International institutions,such as the Gender and Water Alliance (GWA) and IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre , actively support the development of local knowledge and resources to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge and information.NGOs have been involved in building capacity of CBOs and community members. Though many good practices have emerged from the NGO experience, their coverage is low as the replicibility of their programmes is limited.

At the national level, there is a growing recognition of the need to strengthen capacities, and many countries—for instance India and Nepal—are in the process of setting up specialised training or knowledge institutes for the water sector. However, these centres tend to have little outreach to stakeholders at the intermediate and community levels.

Capacity Building tools in Mainstreaming Gender in IWRM

Capacity building tools to enhance the mainstreaming of gender in IWRM can be used to assess the capacity of the staff and identify gaps where capacities need to be further developed.

Institutional development tools assist institutions such as ministries, departments and NGOs, to develop tools for gender mainstreaming at the institutional level. These tools can be used to ensure that internal gender policies and strategies are reflected in recruitment, training programmes and the general practice of the institutions. Indicators should be developed to monitor progress towards achieving gender-related goals.

Social capacity development tools demonstrate how decentralisation and empowerment of local communities can be beneficial for women and girls. They show that the opportunities given to women to participate actively in project management will enhance their capabilities to participate actively in project and community development.

Participatory learning tools offer creative tools to investigate issues of concern to poor women and men related to planning, implementing, and evaluating development activities. They challenge prevailing biases and pre-conceptions about people's knowledge. The tools used range from visualisation, to interviewing and group work. The common theme is the promotion of interactive learning, shared knowledge, and flexible, yet structured analysis. These tools have proven valuable in a wide range of sectors and situations, in both the North and the South.