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The AMCOW Gender Strategy.

Concrete Actions: Advancing the Integration of Gender, Water, Food Security.

Mercy Dikito-Wachtmeister

Senior Officer Global Initiatives: GWPO

27 August, Stockholm Water Week

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The AMCOW Gender Strategy

In June 2011, AMCOW launch of Strategy for Mainstreaming Gender in Africa’s Water Sector,

Result of 3-year participatory process involving stakeholders in 40 countries, - clearly most effective and consultative process ever undertaken in Africa.

The GWP multistakeholder platform in Africa participated in this process, Simon Thuo facilitated this on the GWP side.

GWP welcomes and supports the AMCOW Gender Strategy

Provides Pan African framework, informs , GWP Gender Strategy, - launch Dec 2012

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AMCOW Gender Strategy and Role of Stakeholders

It invites the inputs of multiple stakeholders in line with their mandates and expertise

A partner can :

-work to demonstrate approaches to economic empowerment through access to water for productive uses (objective 3?),

-undertake analytical work to build evidence on the role of gender in food security (objective 4),

-support training (objective 5) or work collectively with WSP and countries on an M&E framework for AMCOW, etc.

Emphasis is partnership rather than doing things alone, importantly so that the best practices are institutionalized and go to scale.

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GWP

GWP is a network of institutions that subscribe to the integrated approach of water resources management

Institutions are NGOS, government departments , research institutions, private sector companies,, etc.

Institutions in a country -Country Water Partnership; in a region - Regional Water Partnership.

The GWP fora at various levels facilitate multistakeholder dialoguing and partnering for action at various levels, in the same way we are doing here at the global level.

GWP work in Africa and other regions adds value to regional and Pan African process through multistakeholder forum.

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The Focus of the Session: INDICATORS Our side event is about CONCRETE actions. 

AMCOW strategy built on partnering, - our side event is partnering to operationalize and concretise the pillars of the AMCOW gender strategy - INDICATORS for gender, water and food security

AMCOW gender strategy is at early stages of implementation, - one of the most important tools in pushing implementation is the existence of key minimum target and shared indicators for benchmarking purposes against which countries can jointly report on gender, water and food security –

With targets, we can develop indicators for joint learning on key issues, on monitoring.

Our interest is multiple water infrastructure and uses, women need water for both production and domestic chores- our focus is holistic - livelihood approach

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INDICATORS Focus conti….

There is considerable work on indicators by partners/organisations, wealth of knowledge exists. Our session is about joint learning around indicators

Its about pulling together and synthesizing a lot of work that has already gone on in various organisations,

It pulls partners experiences together for more consensus on broad targets on what is meant by gender equality concretely in the water arena.

We are thus creating a forum for more collaboration on this area through

the AMCOW gender strategy, we are putting procedures to do this in place.

If we don’t operationalise matters this way, gender equality becomes lip service,”Working with gender issues obliges organisations to set their own houses in order” (Sweetman (1997)

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Evolution of Gender Sensitive Indicators Before 1970s, most attention paid to economic indicators- development focus

economic growth and infrastructure development. Neoclassical theories!

Aid philosophies moved towards human-centred development and basic needs 1970s and early 1980s- "social indicators emerged – but not gender sensitive

Mid-1980s- focus on indicators of empowerment and participation & gender sensitive indicators- gender-sensitivity established as a necessary condition of development efforts- but only in some areas

Currently gender indicators assumed even great importance in donor agency work (eg USAID, World Bank, IWMI, IFPR , FAO etc ) and NGO work

Global trends: GDI, GEM, African Gender Development Indicator, Women in Agriculture Empowerment Index, etc

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Why Gender Targets and Indicators?

Reasons include: Concretising gendered actions, -taking gender equality seriously-

defining goals/targets and road maps for change, and monitoring progress (process and outcomes)

Holding governments /institutions accountable- key tool of accountability

Advising policy makers and program managers, enabling better planning and actions for gender equality

Clarifying messages for gender changes and advocacy

Generating evidence (research) for policy influence

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Which Methods and Methodologies?

Not everything can be counted, and not everything that is counted, counts (Einstein).

Quantitative (‘hard’ facts to build case for addressing gender differential, trends, comparison)

Qualitative methods (richer insights by indepth examination of social processes and dynamics, unravelling causal relationships)

Participatory approaches- men and women should be agents of own development-

Combination of both Quantitative and qualitative +participatory

More work has been done on quantitative than qualitative indicators.

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Types of Indicators There are different types of gender-sensitive indicators including: Input indicators , - concern resources devoted to gender in

workplans projects/programmes

Process indicators, -achievement during implementation, track gender progress

Output indicators- identify intermediate results for gender targets,

Outcome - longer-term gender related results of the project,

Impact indicators- describe actual gender-related change arising from interventions

For M &E -This means keeping your eyes wide open

Being attentive along the journey is as important as the destination

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Thank you!