Esther van Hoeve ()

Esther has a MSc degree in Tropical Land use from Wageningen University. As part of her internship she spent 6 months with a local NGO in the Philippines, which works in the field of Natural Resource Management. She participated in their community organizing activities. Here she got interested in the impact of insecure entitlements to natural resources on sustainable management of these resources. In Burkina Faso she studied this impact in more detail, focusing on gender relations (with special attention for land entitlements) within the household impacting the utilization of soil and water conservation technologies.

At Nijmegen University she obtained her MSc in Advanced Development studies. This involved a one year traineeship at the South Asia department of Cordaid (Caritas the Netherlands). In 2002 she was employed as an associate professional officer at the International Livestock Research Institute based in Ethiopia and later in Laos. She specialized in the role of livestock in the livelihoods of women and men and developed a gender framework to analyse this role.

Returning to the Netherlands in 2006, Esther was employed for over a year at RIONED, a Dutch network for urban drainage and sanitation. Within GWA she will be responsible for the programmes in which GWA cooperates with UN-Habitat. These programmes focus on Capacity building in the field of Gender, Water and Sanitation.

Gender; Esther likes to do action research . She is inspired to work from a gender point of view since it shows far more capabilities that men and women have in improving their own livelihoods and those of their families and communities. “You just miss loads of opportunities if you leave out part of the population you want to ‘help’. And may be this missing input can be the key to successful programmes. What a waste to just ignore it!”.

Water and Sanitation; access to clean water and proper sanitation is at the heart of human wellbeing for all. Badly implemented programmes however, can worsen problems immensely, negatively impacting women and children in most cases. Gender mainstreaming in the project cycle can contribute to the success of WATSAN programmes only if stakeholders do believe in the added value of this process. Making gender mainstreaming work is a true challenge that Esther likes to take.