Gender Targeting of Service Delivery

Addressing equity is not only a matter of addressing the intra-urban service gap between the poor and non-poor households and communities; it is also necessary to consider the gap within households, and to consider in detail the unequal access experienced by women and other vulnerable members of the household and community. Services and infrastructure projects have, for decades, generated a vast number of lessons about differing gender roles and relations and provided information on the differentiated impacts of services. Yet it is noticeable that documentation on PPP arrangements fails to draw on this body of knowledge and PPPs rarely incorporate responses that might promote greater gender equity through the partnership agenda. Moreover, the lack of emphasis on gender issues means that gender impacts are not currently monitored or evaluated.

The issues concerning gender in service partnerships involving the private sector are mostly similar to those found in existing service delivery arrangements, and it must be recognised of course that some municipalities have only limited experience themselves in addressing gender biases in service delivery. Yet evidence suggests that others have initiated a more gender aware and sensitive approach to development, particularly in some parts of South Asia where community development and participation processes have become established, often through women's organisations.

Any change to services and the manner in which they are delivered is likely to affect women first, and often to a significant degree (see Box 7.8). As women bear productive, domestic and reproductive roles, they are most affected by the access or lack of access that a household has to basic services. They are also likely to be disproportionately affected by the level of service and the cost of service. In most households, it is the women who collect water, organise household sanitation and determine whether any household money will be spent on the removal of waste.

A number of parameters underlie the development of a gender-aware service arrangement. These include the following.

• Women prioritise services differently Gender disaggregated poverty assessments often expose the fact that women prioritise water supply improvements, while men prioritise electricity or income generation, for example. This seems linked to the fact that men do not work for their water; it is provided by female members of the family. Women pay for it, queue for it and carry it, and value its use for domestic, health and hygiene purposes more than men. Women are also likely to value sanitation services to a greater degree than men, as the lack of access to private and adequate facilities threatens their personal safety and hygiene. Women are likely to prioritise service improvements in relation to household needs; men will prioritise in terms of their individual needs.

• Women tend to have responsibility for providing services to the household Women are generally responsible for collecting water, disposing of refuse and clearing flooded houses. Water collection can result in a loss of productive time and a loss of education for women and girls. Impacts of changes of location of standpipes and facilities will have beneficial and adverse impacts on them, and they are most aware of the constraints facing them, e.g., low water pressure, long waiting times, broken standpipes, inadequate household collection, inadequate lane-level waste collection etc.

• Women tend to pay for household services Women are frequently burdened with the task of ensuring that payments for domestic consumption are made. They know what they can and can not afford at any time. Changes in the costs of services will affect what they can spend on other basic needs such as food and health care. Where there is a shortfall, it is often the women and girls who suffer by reducing their food intake or health care.

• Women often undertake low-status activities to earn an income Many of the workers employed as unskilled labour or acting as informal providers of water and waste services, are women. Changes to the vehicles of delivery are most likely to affect women's incomes. In Biratnagar, over half the sweepers are women. In Dar-es-Salaam, illustrated in Box 7.9, over half those involved in micro-enterprise solid waste activities are women.

Recognising the importance of gender in decision-making is perhaps the first step, but how can gender be incorporated into the various aspects of service partnerships? It is not enough to simply cite gender equity as a goal of the partnership. It is necessary to define how it will be achieved. This means considering gender sensitive processes, the content of the arrangement and the financial arrangements that are established. Within the specific institutional and social context of a partnership arrangement it is necessary to examine the current role of women and identify the specific gender implications. These include, for instance, tariffs and fees, subsidies, procurement policies, payment options and facilities, performance management, job creation, actors, support systems, and the scope and nature of general and targeted activities.

Box 7.8 Gender Targeting

The impact of access on gender

	Water	Sanitation	Solid waste
Access to service	• Water collection consumes a major proportion of poor women's time	• Access to clean sanitation is a central component of women's personal safety	• The incidence of disease among women and children in areas without adequate waste collection is far higher than men
Level of service	• Improved levels of service reduce the incidence of ill-health, especially among women and children, because they spend more time at home	• In urban areas, access to in-house sanitation reduces both the risk and the fear of crimes such as rape	• As for water
Cost of service	• Because women tend to pay for domestic consumption, the proportion on of the household budget spent water is critical to determining the balance of resources for other items such as food and shelter. • Lower costs for water would improve nutrition rates etc.	• Improved public health and infant mortality and possibly reduced incidence of rape	• There are no necessary gendered gains from subsidising waste removal, as in the absence of an effective collection service poor households dump waste rather than incur costs of removal. But this may pose a public health threat

The impact of subsidy identification

	State identification process	Self-selection process	Registration process
Information distortions	• Because information is collected at the household level, the position of both men and women may be distorted. Distortion costs may be high	• Women often will not be able to make the effort to register because of a lack of transport or information about the subsidy. Lack of take-up of subsidy will reduce total costs but also under- mine the impact of the programme	• Household structure may be distorted to allow access to the subsidy • The cost will depend on the subsidy design
Incentive distortions	• Area-based targeting may trap the poor, especially women, in areas with no economic opportunities. • Unpredicted costs of exacerbated poverty may be very high	• Area-based targeting may trap the poor, especially women, in areas with no economic opportunities. Long-term costs of ongoing subsidies to unsustainable households are very high	• Gendered registration would not applyto the subsidy on water, waste, electricity and sanitation
Administrative and invasive losses	• Differentiating between the amounts allocated to women and men would not apply to the subsidies on water, waste, sanitation and electricity	• Gendered self-selection would not apply to the subsidies on water, waste, electricity and sanitation	• Gendered registration would not apply to the subsidy on water, waste, electricity and sanitation
Accuracy	• There is generally insufficient information that differentiates between the needs and position of women and men to make an informed selection	• Depends on the service design	• Gendered registration would not apply to the subsidy on water, waste, electricity and sanitation

Source: Parnell, 1998

Box 7.9 Women in the Solid Waste Workforce
Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania

Links to Boxes
7.15, 10.10

In Dar-es-Salaam, recent efforts to involve the private sector have helped to create more than 1500 jobs. Solid waste collection and street sweeping has been contracted out, since early 1999, to small-scale enterprises and CBOs. Coverage of waste collection increased from 5 to 40%, and these services now also reach the poor. The key recipe for better services and more jobs has been a comprehensive planning process involving relevant local actors. The inclusion of the local employment perspective in urban planning can be a primary motivation for shifting to a private sector approach in solid waste management. One of the most important contributions local governments can make is to create the right conditions to help the private sector to invest and generate jobs. The provision of services is a major opportunity to create employment directly. Services such as waste collection, water distribution and street and market maintenance can be delivered effectively by small-scale initiatives. This is also likely to improve and to expand coverage of previously unserviced segments of the population.

With support from an International Labour Organization (ILO) InFocus Programme under an inter-regional PPP programme, the Dar-es-Salaam municipality reorganised waste services in the city to facilitate a role for micro- and small-enterprise development in waste collection in the city. The contractors started operation in February 1999 and within two months had doubled the quantity of waste collected. A number of lessons are instructive for other municipalities, among them the issues of labour (discussed below) and fee collection (see Box 7.15).

At the time of starting operations in 1999, the contractors employed over 1900 people. To some extent, this number was needed to clear the waste that had accumulated in all areas. Many contractors, however, employed too many people due to their lack of experience. They were also under pressure from local leaders, who forced contractors to employ people of their preference in return for their support in the community. Not only did this contribute to over-employment, but many of these workers proved to be unreliable. Within two or three months, the contractors realised they could not collect enough fees to pay the wages of all their workers. They reduced their workforce to a total of about 1250 employees. This number included people who previously had been partially employed in other activities by the contractors. Some of the employment replaced the workers who had been retrenched earlier by the city commission, in particular street sweepers. It is estimated that the net increase in employment is about 900-1000 people.

Even before waste management was reorganised, women were prompted to engage in these activities because of the increasingly intolerable living conditions in some areas. Women's groups created their own work by starting waste collection services, for which they charged money.

'The Kisutu Women Development Trust Fund started as a group in 1995 with 5 members as a tailoring and embroidery group. Lack of a market for our products made us start informal catering service, also known as Mama Ntilies. This activity also did not bring us sufficient income. We became involved in solid waste collection and disposal as a result of not getting enough income from our other activities. The other reason is that we realized that the boys who were doing this job, were earning a living with this work. Moreover, solid waste was becoming a problem and many families were using children to dispose of their waste at cheap rates. One child was knocked down by a speeding car while doing this job. KIWODET started waste collection in June 1998 with 20 members, all women. Two years later, they were progressing well and had initiated more diversified activities in solid waste management. They had, as one of the first CBOs in the city, started composting activities after attending a course initiated by ILO in July 1999. They obtained extra income through recycling, by sorting out recyclable goods and selling them to industries.'

Women and previously unemployed youths have particularly benefited from the newly created job opportunities. Women constitute just over half of the total workforce of the waste contractors. They are, however, under-represented as owners and managers of the enterprises and CBOs, except in some CBOs, which are managed by women only. Almost all street sweepers are women, while the collection of waste from households and enterprises is done by men as well as women. Most contractors consider handcarts too heavy for women, and they also do not employ any women to work on trucks. On the other hand, women are preferred for the job of revenue collector; they are believed to be more honest and to approach the clients more efficiently. Male youths are contracted for the heavy jobs, such as pushing handcarts and loading trucks. They also constitute a considerable proportion of the waste collectors. Like women, they are under-represented in decision-making positions. None of the employees are younger than 18.

Not all jobs are full time. Many workers are paid only for the days on which they actually work, which varies between two and seven days per week. The more established contractors pay weekly or monthly salaries, as well as secondary benefits such as housing allowance. All workers are paid at least the minimum wage of US$1.50 per day.

Source: Adapted from Bakker et al, 2000