Sanitation from a gender perspective
Hello, everybody. My name is petra-kohler i'm a social anthropologist working at sandec. My focus is on the persons using certain technologies. This module's topic is sanitation from a gender perspective. A gender approach will address the needs of greater spectrum of users not just women and make interventions more acceptable to the community as a whole. I will introduce you to the lines of thinking the arguments for gender considerate sanitation and shortly present an ongoing research project on WASH in hospitals in india and uganda with a strong gender focus.
Now please read the definition of gender. But what does that mean? it is about the different roles, tasks and responsibilities of men and women in a given context, in a given society. Gender is something that we do but gender is something that is also dumped to us. What this means in practice for sanitation planning and implementation will be addressed in the following slides. Sanitation from a gender perspective is pervaded by many interrelating aspects.
In this gender flower, you can see the i seven key aspect/i like policy, rights and justice education, health and safety aspects culture, technology and economic aspects. We will have a closer look on some of them. Some of the gender-related challenges are illustrated in this picture. Inequalities in acces specially in public spaces. Particular groups, such as women, elderly, children and handicapped people are more strongly affected by the absence of adequate sanitation. Health and safety aspect specially women and girls can encounter various problems in connection with non-appropriate sanitation like violence, occuring as a result of walking to a public toilet or infections from waiting too long to urinate. Girls' school performance is influenced by sanitation.
Many girls do not attend school because of lack of proper sanitation especially in secondary education where menstrual hygiene becomes a matter. School absenteeism and dropout of girls lead to gaps in education between girls and boys. The most sophisticated technology does not solve any problem if it is not adopted by the users one of the lessons sometimes painfully learned in the past decades. Focusing on biological aspects it is obvious that men and women follow different practices encounter various challenges and have different needs and priorities when it comes to sanitation. As an example urinate in a different way than women. Women spend around six years menstruating in their lives.
On average, each woman will dispose off 125 to 150 kilograms of sanitary material in her lifetime. In the developing world many end up in waterways, open dumps or are littering communities. We all want to have toilets which are clean safe and healthy to use accessible, comfortable and assure for privacy. In order to plan for appropriate gender-friendly sanitation facilities or to improve conditions of existing toilets which are far away from acceptable like shown in those pictures the following aspects must also be understood.
Intimate needs, personal hygiene - like are you a washer or a wiper - the social construction of dignit like the perceptions of purity and impureness. Now, I will present you a case study which takes into account all the mentioned before on gender and sanitation. It is a interdisciplinary two-year research project called WASH in the context of maternal health and menstrual hygiene how indian and ugandan health centrum managed the sanitation needs of special user groups. It is combining social anthropology and gender studies with sanitary engineering.
It is researching the different users needs of outpatients, inpatient sattendants, staff members and wash infrastructure in health care facilities particularly on how they deal with the special needs of women during menstruation child birth and the child bed. The full range of dimensions like health, safety issues accessibility, etc. Was covered applying different assessment tools.
First, an infrastructure assessment was undertaken which discovered the following lacking topics. A place to take a bath after giving birth; washing and drying place for usable menstrual hygiene products and a disposal bin for used for menstrual hygiene products. Secondly, semi-structured interviews where gender-specific question guides were applied; and a gender-sensitive focus group discussion tool which will be explained in more detail in the next slide. The gender action learning system, GAL sis a technique from the participatory rural appraisal repertoire. GALS is basically a focus group discussion tool and has been adapted and tested to the context of gender and sanitation.
The ideal group size of a GALS is around 30 to 40 participants with 50% males and 50% females. Reality sometimes shows a bit a different picture like experienced in india. Instead of the planned 20 women and 20 men from different villages 80 women appeared and only 15 men. This means also that the facilitators need to be very flexible and act and adapt on the existing situation. GALS spaces upon sex separated group discussions complemented by writing or drawing and sex mixed presentations, and plenary discussions. The two core elements from GALS are the <i gender diamond.
The purpose of this first step of the exercise is to identify the challenges faced by the participants in connection with their experiences on a certain given topic like sanitation issues in the presented case. The second element is called action trees. The goal of this exercise with the action trees is to identify the causes of the named problems from the gender diamond and to find possible solutions to address and solve them. The process is similar to the one before. Now, some explanations. The roots of the trees are the causes of the challenges stemming from the gender diamond. The branches are the possible solutions to address the problems identified before. And potential personal commitments to solving the problems those are the fruits. GALS has a lot of strength.
It is a striking method when it comes to the identification of topics which are unusual, sensitive or taboo and it fosters the inclusions of positions of women and men alike. The overall data stemming from the three assessment tools provides evidence for interventions that are not only gender considerate but also neat spaced, technically appropriate and socially acceptable. After this excursion into a concrete example of a gender-sensitive plan and executed project i would like to come to the summary of this module. You heard about the main sanitation challenges learned by including a gender perspective into sanitation planning is of essential importance and how it could be done from an example in the field.
Maybe you want to include a gender perspective into your upcoming project? then ensure for following good practices. First, integrate gender systematically to your project from the very beginning and try also to involve gender experts. Collect sex-disaggregated data of the beneficiary population and send mixed teams to the fields. Ensure for participation of men and women in the needs analysis, planning and in decision-making. Thank you for watching and goodbye.
Now please read the definition of gender. But what does that mean? it is about the different roles, tasks and responsibilities of men and women in a given context, in a given society. Gender is something that we do but gender is something that is also dumped to us. What this means in practice for sanitation planning and implementation will be addressed in the following slides. Sanitation from a gender perspective is pervaded by many interrelating aspects.
In this gender flower, you can see the i seven key aspect/i like policy, rights and justice education, health and safety aspects culture, technology and economic aspects. We will have a closer look on some of them. Some of the gender-related challenges are illustrated in this picture. Inequalities in acces specially in public spaces. Particular groups, such as women, elderly, children and handicapped people are more strongly affected by the absence of adequate sanitation. Health and safety aspect specially women and girls can encounter various problems in connection with non-appropriate sanitation like violence, occuring as a result of walking to a public toilet or infections from waiting too long to urinate. Girls' school performance is influenced by sanitation.
Many girls do not attend school because of lack of proper sanitation especially in secondary education where menstrual hygiene becomes a matter. School absenteeism and dropout of girls lead to gaps in education between girls and boys. The most sophisticated technology does not solve any problem if it is not adopted by the users one of the lessons sometimes painfully learned in the past decades. Focusing on biological aspects it is obvious that men and women follow different practices encounter various challenges and have different needs and priorities when it comes to sanitation. As an example urinate in a different way than women. Women spend around six years menstruating in their lives.
On average, each woman will dispose off 125 to 150 kilograms of sanitary material in her lifetime. In the developing world many end up in waterways, open dumps or are littering communities. We all want to have toilets which are clean safe and healthy to use accessible, comfortable and assure for privacy. In order to plan for appropriate gender-friendly sanitation facilities or to improve conditions of existing toilets which are far away from acceptable like shown in those pictures the following aspects must also be understood.
Intimate needs, personal hygiene - like are you a washer or a wiper - the social construction of dignit like the perceptions of purity and impureness. Now, I will present you a case study which takes into account all the mentioned before on gender and sanitation. It is a interdisciplinary two-year research project called WASH in the context of maternal health and menstrual hygiene how indian and ugandan health centrum managed the sanitation needs of special user groups. It is combining social anthropology and gender studies with sanitary engineering.
It is researching the different users needs of outpatients, inpatient sattendants, staff members and wash infrastructure in health care facilities particularly on how they deal with the special needs of women during menstruation child birth and the child bed. The full range of dimensions like health, safety issues accessibility, etc. Was covered applying different assessment tools.
First, an infrastructure assessment was undertaken which discovered the following lacking topics. A place to take a bath after giving birth; washing and drying place for usable menstrual hygiene products and a disposal bin for used for menstrual hygiene products. Secondly, semi-structured interviews where gender-specific question guides were applied; and a gender-sensitive focus group discussion tool which will be explained in more detail in the next slide. The gender action learning system, GAL sis a technique from the participatory rural appraisal repertoire. GALS is basically a focus group discussion tool and has been adapted and tested to the context of gender and sanitation.
The ideal group size of a GALS is around 30 to 40 participants with 50% males and 50% females. Reality sometimes shows a bit a different picture like experienced in india. Instead of the planned 20 women and 20 men from different villages 80 women appeared and only 15 men. This means also that the facilitators need to be very flexible and act and adapt on the existing situation. GALS spaces upon sex separated group discussions complemented by writing or drawing and sex mixed presentations, and plenary discussions. The two core elements from GALS are the <i gender diamond.
The purpose of this first step of the exercise is to identify the challenges faced by the participants in connection with their experiences on a certain given topic like sanitation issues in the presented case. The second element is called action trees. The goal of this exercise with the action trees is to identify the causes of the named problems from the gender diamond and to find possible solutions to address and solve them. The process is similar to the one before. Now, some explanations. The roots of the trees are the causes of the challenges stemming from the gender diamond. The branches are the possible solutions to address the problems identified before. And potential personal commitments to solving the problems those are the fruits. GALS has a lot of strength.
It is a striking method when it comes to the identification of topics which are unusual, sensitive or taboo and it fosters the inclusions of positions of women and men alike. The overall data stemming from the three assessment tools provides evidence for interventions that are not only gender considerate but also neat spaced, technically appropriate and socially acceptable. After this excursion into a concrete example of a gender-sensitive plan and executed project i would like to come to the summary of this module. You heard about the main sanitation challenges learned by including a gender perspective into sanitation planning is of essential importance and how it could be done from an example in the field.
Maybe you want to include a gender perspective into your upcoming project? then ensure for following good practices. First, integrate gender systematically to your project from the very beginning and try also to involve gender experts. Collect sex-disaggregated data of the beneficiary population and send mixed teams to the fields. Ensure for participation of men and women in the needs analysis, planning and in decision-making. Thank you for watching and goodbye.
0 Response to "Sanitation from a gender perspective"
Posting Komentar