Demand responsiveness, participation, gender, and poverty : making the links with sustainability of water and sanitation programs : East and Southern Africa regional synthesis report

Gender mainstreaming has been fundamentally a big question in the water sector. It has been defined as the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes in all areas and at all levels. It is against this background that in 1997 the Participatory Learning and Action Initiative was launched to advance gender concerns and participation. Under the initiative global gender assessments were undertaken. In East and Southern Africa assessments were conducted in 19 rural and peri-urban communities in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa and Zambia. The objectives included assessing whether services had a different impact on women than on men, on poor than on rich, based on the benefits accrued and the burdens borne in delivering and managing the services. Among the expected outcomes was a methodology of tools and techniques that would encourage gender participation and to be poverty sensitive and demand responsive.
The assessment evaluated how responsive the service-delivery agencies were to user demands as well as to national policies and institutional framework in the sector. They were perceived as being able to assist countries to develop and use their own methods for participatory assessment and to develop strategies that would respond to community demand and incorporate an approach to their water and sanitation programmes that took gender and poverty issues into account.