Message 28: Lakech Haile

Lakech Haile writes that one of the reasons for why gender has not been mainstreamed in water management is because existing guidelines are not culturally sensitive, and they are difficult to put into practice because of the range of institutional arrangements in various countries.

Dear Moderator,
The following are my reponses to the questions forwarded.

1 Why?

Because it is a question of human right : fairness and benefit sharing.
if we want water development to be sustained we have to mainstream gender.
eg. If we do not train women on maintenance work the sustainability of water will have a problem(be it for a day or long time)

2. Issues that challenges the integration of gender?

gender is not taken as one important criteria of concern it is always a lip service.
water development is taken as only a technical issue, the social component is totally neglected.
water sector is dominated by men even those few female engineers consider themselves as men and ignore the issue.

3. Why is gender not mainstreamed in water management?

The guidelines developed so far can not be used due to cultural differences and /or can not be replicated due to differences of the objective situation of a specific country or place.(Institutional arrangements etc.)
Lack of capacity to mainstream gender
Even those who have the capacity can not do it by themselves since it needs a system which gives a room for others to participate.
There is a believe that gender comes at implementation not at the programme level, but once it is ignored at the programme level it is a dead issue.

Thank you

Lakech Haile
Ministry of Water Resources
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.