Gender in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) development projects

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• Christiana Smyrilli (EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Infrastructure and Built Environment)
• Wednesday 14 November 2018, 12:00-13:00
• Dept. of Engineering Trumpington Street, Baker Building - Oatley 1 Meeting Room.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Tim Forman.

This talk is part of the Department of Engineering Division D lunchtime seminar series.

The research explores the relationship between gender roles and development infrastructure projects in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector in rural Uganda. As acknowledged by practitioners and researchers for the past 5 decades, men and women in developing areas hold different roles and responsibilities within their household and community. This is also true for WASH practices, and therefore they perform different duties and have different needs. In Uganda, women are the primary managers of water resources at household level, as well as the main drivers for sanitation and hygiene practice at household level; men are concerned with the commercial use of water. Insights into developing infrastructure that addresses the needs of communities could emerge from understanding the multiple dimensions of the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that affect the roles that men and women play within the WASH sector. Fieldwork has been undertaken in a number of rural communities in south Uganda, where group discussions and interviews were conducted with key players in the WASH sector, government representatives and people from the communities. The qualitative data collected provides an understanding of how gender roles are influenced by other factors, as they are dependent on, and formed by, other social structures, and consequently how this relationship influences the way infrastructure is used, maintained, operated etc. The findings highlight the importance of good leadership by both men and women at community level, which leads to improvements in WASH infrastructure provision. Moreover, there seems to be a strong relationship between educating women and improved sanitation and hygiene practices. Finally, cultural attributes have a strong influence on the way men and women view water and sanitation tasks, how they perform them and how they engage with and value the infrastructure. The paper gives an overview of the findings and suggests future research can lead to new evidence to support gender-sensitive infrastructure.

This talk is part of the Engineering Div D Sustainability and Resilience Research Seminars series.

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• Dept. of Engineering Trumpington Street, Baker Building - Oatley 1 Meeting Room
• Engineering Div D Sustainability and Resilience Research Seminars

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