Since 1995, and the Beijing conference, it has been shown that taking gender into account in development projects improves their impact. This approach should be understood as taking into account the specific needs and constraints of women and men, and of girls and boys, when defining objectives and the activities needed to reach them. These differences are of course biological, but they are also social, in that communities very often impose particular norms assigning roles and attitudes that constrain one group or the other.
In the context of access to water, sanitation and hygiene, the specific needs and constraints of women and girls are particularly significant. They are responsible for fetching water and they have a personal need for access to latrines. Women are the primary users of water, sanitation and hygiene systems, because of the social roles assigned to them by patriarchal societies: responsible for the family, for caring for children and older people, for preparing meals and so on, they take on tasks that bring them face to face with the use, degradation and protection of natural resources and facilities. The family budget is also central to managing water, hygiene and sanitation tasks: while women are generally responsible for them, it does not follow that they control the spending involved, which can create conflicts over access to resources.
Yet women are generally little or not at all present in the municipal decision-making bodies where infrastructure choices are made.
That is why HAMAP-Humanitaire makes sure, with its partners, that there are dedicated spaces for dialogue with them, to learn their needs regarding where standpipes should go and how the price of water and the charges should be set. Our NGO also works to promote positions for women in the associations that manage the facilities.
It is also essential to include the most vulnerable women in the very definition of projects. In some countries they are regularly attacked and abused when they go away from others and are alone, whether to fetch water from distant places or to relieve themselves. That is the case in the Tamil Nadu region of India, where HAMAP-Humanitaire and its partner run sanitation projects. To try to address these problems, the project provides for creating or renovating family latrines and public latrines and for producing sanitary protection locally, accessible to all, to counter period poverty.
Access to sanitation and hygiene is also essential at school, since the lack of decent facilities is one of the main reasons girls drop out at puberty. Menstruation and the need for enclosed spaces with water available remain taboo subjects, so those who design sanitation systems, often men, do not take this specific need of women and girls into account.
Finally, it is worth noting that because women's work is mostly informal, their workload in managing latrines and collecting water is not sufficiently taken into account in national water, sanitation and hygiene frameworks. Careers and sector training remain dominated by men, which tends to make any deep change in these inequalities difficult.
HAMAP-Humanitaire has identified several ways to improve how gender equity is taken into account in projects and to ensure a positive impact for everyone.
Integrating gender into water, sanitation and hygiene projects can prove complex. Distrust among the men in place, the weight of social and cultural traditions, high illiteracy among women and their invisibility in the public and decision-making sphere are the main difficulties in embedding this dimension in projects. To overcome them, a number of tools have been identified. First, it is essential that the team leading the project is convinced of the value of a gender approach, and that an assessment is made, from the design stage, based on a specific analysis of the needs and constraints of women and men. This is done through dedicated socio-economic studies. It is from that assessment that awareness can grow and that suitable objectives and activities can be defined. The final evaluation can then also highlight the impact of a more inclusive approach, encouraging shared responsibility between women and men in the long-term management of the facilities.