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Published on: 08/08/2011

In 2009 gender specialists were asked to review the current Indonesia Sanitation Sector Development Program (ISSDP) activities. On the basis of these findings a gender strategy was developed for inclusion in the sanitation awareness campaigns and city sanitation strategies in Indonesia. It lists conclusions and recommendations.

Some of the conclusions were:
  • Gender equality can be strengthened in the national communication strategy and campaigns. The campaign for hand washing now addresses only the responsibilities of immediate caretakers of under-fives, who are mainly females. This is understandable for reasons of efficiency and effectiveness (good campaigns need to be focused), but overlooks that without support from husbands hand washing can increase the burdens of especially poor women.
  • Poor women seem to buy water mainly for drinking and cooking (the message having been that these need safe water, leaving out other activities such as teeth brushing and washing hands and kitchen utensils) and were concerned about the financial implications of higher water consumption. The financial responsibilities of male heads of households for financing of safe water are however not addressed.
  •  In contrast, the sanitation awareness campaign addresses only men. It does not recognize household couples as the unit of complementary male and female responsibilities and decision-making for a safe environment. It also overlooks the community-level dimensions of safe sanitation and hygiene which is currently dominated by men. When more women participate in setting and implementing public agendas, sanitation and hygiene will gain much more prominence than they have now.
  • The draft pro-poor strategy has a similar absence of men from promoting domestic hygiene and women from public decision-making.
Some of the recommendations included:
  • In the Hand Washing Campaign it is recommended to include special messages and sessions for men addressing their responsibilities for financing the means to practice safe hand washing and include gender in media scenes, audios and support materials. Impact measurement should preferably compare effectiveness and costs of interventions.
  • Suggestions to adjust the National Sanitation Awareness Campaign are to have the couple as decision-makers on sanitation, including on the community dimensions, to tailor activities and materials also to the conditions and needs of the poor, and to link information and promotion to community pilots such as CLTS, participatory learning and action planning and community-managed monitoring.
  • Gender images in the media should go beyond stereotypes of women doing the sanitation work in the households and men making the decisions at domestic and community level. Instead, they should include men in domestic roles for sanitation and hygiene, such as financial support, adopting good practices themselves and co-educating their children, and include women in joint decision making with men at domestic and community levels.
  • Informed choices on upgradeable technologies and designs with costs and other implications (e.g. O&M, management, financing options) should be given to men and women heads of households. Suggested steps are included in the report, including on local welfare classification for solidarity action.
  • The position of single women (now over 13% of all adult women on average and probably higher in urban areas and among the urban poor) deserves special attention in media campaigns and in linkages with poverty alleviation in city pilots.
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