Christine Sijbesma wrote innovative profile on gender and sanitation in Kerala for World Bank Institute

Published on: 20/10/2011

IRC’s Christine Sijbesma wrote an innovative profile on gender and sanitation in Kerala for the World Bank Institute.

What is Innovative?

On the question What is Innovative the Institute wrote: 

The state sanitation programme in Kerala, India, shifted from a supply-driven, externally subsidized approach to a decentralized, community-managed programme covering safe excreta, wastewater, and solid waste disposal. Gender awareness and capacity building were part of the local planning campaign that involved women’s NGOs and water and sanitation NGOs with gender expertise. Gender equity in decision making, local programme management, hygiene and technical education, and economic opportunities for poor women were part of the objectives and strategies.

Socio Economic Unit Foundation and IRC were involved in implementing a pro-poor sanitation programme at community level in Kerala from 1998 to 2006 that included effective financial and social accountability checks. The purpose of the state’s Clean Kerala State Sanitation Program is to improve health, the environment, and socioeconomic development by ensuring that all households have and use sanitary toilets and good hygiene and that the environment is free of human excreta, solid waste, and wastewater. Two pilot projects, co-financed by the governments of Denmark, Kerala, and the Netherlands from 1988 to 2000 and by the European Union from 2002 to 2006, were particularly instrumental in developing and testing the gender approaches.

The community-managed sanitation project’s general objective was to develop ways of providing poor households with proper latrines. Specific objectives were to develop a mobilization programme focusing on women and men, organize gender-balanced participation in planning and implementation, construct technically sound latrines at low costs targeted especially at the poor, promote good hygiene and monitor maintenance, use, and hand washing. The objectives of safe drainage and improved water quality through well chlorination were added later.

The EU project Women, Work, Wellbeing, Waste and Sanitation had as its objectives to measure the cost-effectiveness of a pro-poor, gender-based approach to excreta and solid waste management in low-income coastal towns and peri-urban settlements in Bangladesh, Kerala, (India), and Sri Lanka. It aimed to measurably improve sanitation in three locations, compare the costs and effectiveness of the government programmes, scale up the approaches in sanitation policies and programmes of local and state governments, and strengthen cooperation between local universities and NGOs in participatory research.

Lessons Learned: Gender and Poverty

• Gender equity strategies must be explicitly developed, tested, and documented during the learning phase if they are to be mainstreamed during scale-up. This is needed for organizational development and for training staff in other organizations who have not gone through the learning process.
• Helping poor women to work in toilet mason groups freed them from financial and sexual exploitation by male masons and allowed them to work near home in their own communities. It also provided income and career opportunities (e.g., as trainers and in the housing industry, including in sanitation production centres and government housing schemes) and built on their easier contacts with fellow women, including on health and hygiene. The female mason had a high commitment to high-quality sanitation work and suited the preference of male and female household members to have female rather than male masons working in the house or compound while male household members are away at work.

References

Zacharia, S., and K. Shordt. 2004. “How to Change and Sustain Hygiene Behaviours: Research in India,” Paper presented at the 30th WEDC International Conference, Vientiane, Lao PDR, “People-centred Approaches to Water and Environmental Sanitation.” Available at http://wedc.lboro.ac.uk/conferences/pdfs/30/Zacharia.pdf.

Kurup, K. Balachandra, K.A. Abdulla, C.O. Kurien, O.T. Remadevi, T. Mathew, I. John,K. Mathew et al. 1996. The Community-managed Sanitation Program in Kerala: Learning from Experience. The Hague: IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. Available at http://www.irc.nl/content/download/2575/26699/file/pr4e.pdf.

Raghavan, Rajiv. 2000. “Building the Balance: Stories on Water, Sanitation and Gender Equity from Kerala, India.” Delft: IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre (video). Summary at http://www.washdoc.info/docsearch/title/149997 .

Mohanty, Sanat. 2005. “New Amendments Useless without Enforcement.” In The South Indian, April 10, 2005.

Mohanakumar, S. 2002. “From People’s Plan to Plan Sans People.” Economic and Political Weekly, April 20: 1492–7.

Peer reviewed

This Innovative Activity Profile was written by Christine Sijbesma (IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre), and also draws from the Case Study “Preventing Corruption in Sanitation: A Case from Kerala, India” prepared for the World Bank Institute in cooperation with Suma Mathew and K. Balachandra Kurup of SEUF, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. The Profile was reviewed by Laurent Stravato (IFAD), Dominique Lallement, and Catherine Ragasa (Consultants).

Source:World Bank Institute 2010, India:  Gender in Community-managed Sanitation Program in Kerala, Module 9 /// Innovative Activity Profile 3, free six-page PDF Accessed 20 October 2011