Message 27: Barbara Schreiner

Barbara Schreiner shares an experience from the Policy and Regulation Department of Water Affairs and Forestry South Africa, where they are training senior managers in policy and regulation on gender mainstreaming.

Hi there,

I'm not sure that I am answering the questions as posed, but I want to throw in a couple of comments. Ithink it is important that one looks at the issue of gender and agriculture not just at the projcet level, but at the level of policy, national priorities, etc. for example, in the South African case, we have developed a policy on providing financial support to small scale farmers. We have tried to include a clause that incentivises that, where there are women farmers, they are represented on the decision-making structures in the water user association. The reasoning behind it is two-fold - the first is that we have a Constitution and legislation that formally mandates us to redress the historical race and gender imbalances of South Africa, and thus we are legally obligated to address gender disparities. The second is the recognition that women's needs and men's needs are often different and one needs to allow both sets of voices to be heard in order to get decisions that truly benefit both groups. This doesn't, however, remove the challenge that I am sure everyone is aware of, that bringing women into structures doesn't necessarily empower them to speak and make themselves heard, particularly in areas where cultural practices militate against this.

One of the things that we are doing as a Department at the moment, to address the challenges of gender in IWRM generally (not only w.r.t agricultural water use) is to train senior managers in the policy and regulation branch in gender mainstreaming tools so that we can be more proactive in developing policy tools, strategies etc at the very highest level that are gender sensitive, not only relying on this to happen at the grassroots/project level. We are currently 2 modules into a 6 module training programme spread over 6 months, and already it has generated some very interesting debate around gender issues in water management and how to deal with them at the project and policy levels.

Barbara

Barbara Schreiner

Senior Executive Manager: Policy and Regulation Department of Water

Affairs and Forestry South Africa

Tel: +27-12-336-8745

Fax: +27-12-336-8337