Impacts of Gender Mainstreaming of the GWA
While the participants of the conference were gender aware in that it was not an issue to be raised and forced upon, what came out of the working group sessions indicated a lack of understanding of the concept of gender. Often when experiences were shared of projects and programmes on the ground and even policies developed, the focus of women in isolation was still apparent. Furthermore, although recognised that women play a pivotal role in managing water resources, much more accent was placed in their role of domestic water and not across the water sectors. Finally in discussing policies and implementation, it was also argued whether separate polices on gender were required or if it was more efficient to have one water policy linking all sub-sectors where gender should not be seen as a separate areas but be mainstreamed within the policies and implementation strategies.
It must be noted that the gender ambassadors, who participated in all six working group sessions, had prepared case studies to illustrate the implication of gender within each of the issue areas mentioned under. This was most helpful in getting a better understanding of the concept and the inter-relationship between women and men thus emphasising gender as the concept, which is about women and men and not women in isolation. The result of the constant reminder of this fact of the ambassadors argued with very strong facts led to the conference accepting Gender Equity as a core value of the water and poverty initiative. This for the alliance can be recorded as a first in our experience of mainstreaming in the water sector.
As a collaborating partner of the initiative the executive secretary has been closely involved as member of the steering committee of the initiative. During a side meeting of the SC members, involvement of the GWA in the water and poverty initiative leading to Kyoto and beyond were discussed.
As gender is now seen as a key focus area and core value of the initiative, but with the fact remaining that the concept is still not well understood, the GWA has been requested to prepare a thematic paper on : Understanding Gender and Water. A series of thematic papers will be prepared for Kyoto as a background document for the water and poverty session. The thematic papers are based on the six key action areas identified with addition of the area on Gender, Macro-economic development and water, poverty and health. Added to this the GWA has also been requested to input into the thematic paper on community participation and empowerment as gender issues are embedded in these areas.
Case studies will be used as basis of discussing these key action areas, as many good experiences already exist and only require scaling up if the objectives of the initiative are to be met. Among the case studies selected to be highlighted in Kyoto, three have been selected from the GWA’s collection. The three cases would be based on the thematic areas with a regional focus from Asia, Africa and Latin America. It must be noted as this conference was primarily for the Asian Pacific Region, not many examples were available from a more global perspective. As the Alliance is working on a global level and participating particularly in the regional conferences leading to Kyoto, it was recommended that we produce three cases. The selection of the cases will be done by the executive secretary in consultation with the ADB. Having these cases presented would also imply that the GWA members from the regions who have worked on these cases would be invited to Kyoto. Mechanisms for presentation will be discussed at a later point of time and coordinated through the GWA secretariat.
In terms of the action plans, several initiatives will probably be launched in a few selected Asian countries, with collaborative partners playing roles in the implementation. The ADB will shortly circulate a proposal for action plans and request collaborative members their views and strategies for implementation as partners. It is understood that the proposals may not be ready by Kyoto, but sufficient agreement in strategies, roles and responsibilities could be identified for the signing of memorandums of understanding between partners to ensure implementation of action plans which can follow later. Parallel to the planning would be the need to raise political will in Kyoto to ensure funding for these plans which will be shared among the implementing partners. As gender will play an important role in this initiative, it is expected that the GWA would have sufficient opportunities for implementation in various means.
