https://www.engineeringnews.co.za

Conference will discuss relation between gender and water issues

30th May 2014

  

Font size: - +

Tackling the issue of gender inequality in Africa is being prioritised as a mechanism for creating more equal societies and spurring development in Africa, says the Water Research Commission of South Africa (WRC), which is hosting a Gender, Water and Development Conference in July this year.

The conference will take place from July 7 to 11, in East London, to debate challenges and successes that have emerged in mainstreaming gender across water policy.
The guiding framework for the conference will be the African Ministers’ Council on Water’s (Amcow’s) water and gender strategy.

As the host, this event also forms part of South Africa’s 20 years of celebration of freedom, where the Department of Water Affairs (DWA) will reflect on its scorecard in delivering clean drinking water and sanitation to the country’s poorest citizens and its efforts to erase the apartheid-era infrastructure backlog.

It is therefore fitting that the conference is held in the country’s historically poorest province, the Eastern Cape – birthplace of former President Nelson Mandela.
Cohosts for the conference include the DWA, Amcow and the International Women for Water Partnership (WFWP).

Several partner organisations, including the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the international Water and Sanitation Partnership, the Global Water Partnership, the International Water Management Institute, the Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Pretoria, and the Stockholm International Water Institute, will support the conference in aligning with global initiatives and widening the audience.

The conference programme is designed to encourage broad stakeholder engagement and to serve as a platform for key role-players from community-based organisations, academia, government institutions and the private sector to exchange knowledge and instil best practice on gender perspectives in policy, programme implementation and governance.
“Our intention for the conference is to challenge the social constructs that define roles for men and women and tackle topics that intersect race, class and gender. Only through an equal society can we achieve the kind of economic stability needed for growth and development in our poorest countries,” says conference chairperson Barbara Schreiner.

The WRC says that the struggle for access to sufficient water in Africa is both a human rights issue and a development challenge, impacting on health, agricultural and economic produc- tivity, the education opportunities of women and children and social stability and wellbeing.

Amcow recognises the significant issues pertaining to water and gender across the continent, and its gender and water strategy has seven key themes.

The first is formulating and implementing gender in water policy, followed by mobilising strategic human and financial resources, imple- menting project interventions through economic empowerment and other gendered approaches, undertaking, sharing and implementing strategic research and operational knowledge, main-streaming gender through human and institutional capacity development, mechanisms to promote cooperation and coordination for mainstreaming gender in the water sector, and monitoring and evaluation systems to support gender equality in the water sector.

The WRC, in partnership with the DWA, Amcow, SADC and the WFWP, is hosting the conference on gender and water to discuss how best these seven issues can be addressed in a meaningful and practical way that will make a real difference to the lives of poor women and men in Africa.

“It is our challenge, as water practitioners and researchers, as development activists, as civil servants, and as people with a passion to see things change, to find practical ways of addressing the gender and water challenges across the continent,” says the WRC.

The conference aims to bring together a wide range of people from inside and outside the water sector to engage, debate and find solutions to these challenges, and through this to assist Amcow, African countries and other developing nations to address the developmental challenges of gender, poverty and water.

Edited by Megan van Wyngaardt
Creamer Media Contributing Editor Online

Comments

Showroom

Rentech
Rentech

Rentech provides renewable energy products and services to the local and selected African markets. Supplying inverters, lithium and lead-acid...

VISIT SHOWROOM 
VEGA Controls SA (Pty) Ltd
VEGA Controls SA (Pty) Ltd

For over 60 years, VEGA has provided industry-leading products for the measurement of level, density, weight and pressure. As the inventor of the...

VISIT SHOWROOM 

Latest Multimedia

sponsored by

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION







sq:0.104 0.16s - 159pq - 2rq
Subscribe Now