Maria Muller and Anne Schienberg
Introduction
Urban waste management is drawing increasing attention, as
citizens observe that too much garbage is lying uncollected in
the streets, causing inconvenience and environmental
pollution, and being a risk for public health. Although
government authorities apply all the means at their disposal,
the piles of wastes only seem to grow from day to day. In an
era of shrinking municipal budgets and a restriction of the
scope of municipal government jurisdiction, the problem is
likely to intensify unless alternate approaches can be
developed.
Increasingly, the private formal sector is seen as a key
participant in the full range of urban waste management
activities, including collection, transportation, treatment,
processing, separate collection, recycling, composting, and
disposal of waste. Neighbourhood associations, communities,
and small, informal enterprises are increasingly involving
themselves in the management of household and business wastes
-- often with the encouragement of NGOs and development
support organisations Ewith the explicit aim of creating
livelihoods and maintaining a clean and healthy living
environment. The Urban Waste Expertise Programme (UWEP) of
WASTE in Gouda, the Netherlands, was created to document the
existing waste practices of people, community organisations
and informal enterprises in low-income urban neighbourhoods,
and to support new initiatives in this field.
Gender enters the UWEP project perspective from a number of
points of view. First, the very definitions of waste and
discarded materials may be influenced by the gender of the
person making the judgement. What looks like junkEto women
may be motorcycle parts to men; what looks like dirtEto men
may be compost or fertilizer to women; the examples are legion
of different sexes seeingEthings differently.
Second, UWEP program experience shows that as men and women
participate (or not) in managing waste within the household,
their relationship to discarded materials may depend on who
they are, as much as or more than on what they do. In
particular, the frequently subordinate status of women may
affect their general access to and control of resources, so
that the wasteEmaterials or waste related activities may be
the only ones which are available to them. New schemes for
managing these materials which are blind to womens activities
may destroy fragile livelihoods. These activities might
concern buying and selling household garbage, re-using and
recycling waste materials, collecting and disposing of human
and solid wastes in a safe manner, and keeping the streets
clean.
Third, men and women may differ in their attitudes towards
public health and community cleanliness, and have markedly
different preferences for how to address public health and
environmental problems. These differences, at the most local
level, affect the type of services women and men would like to
see developed in their communities, how much they are willing
tom pay for these services, and who is responsible for finding
the money to pay from within their part of the family budget.
Such differences may also carry through to preferences for
policies, technologies, or approaches which affect decisions
made by women and men leaders, entrepreneurs, managers, and
public authorities that affect communities, regions,
companies, or municipalities.
Finally, a gender-sensitive project approach and a clear
commitment to gender equity and the empowerment of women are
critical in the support of new initiatives in urban services
and environmental protection; attention to gender can increase
project effectiveness, avoid costly mistakes, and ensure
equitable access to livelihoods, resources or benefits which
the project makes available.
This paper is based on the results of a number of UWEP case
studies. Although these case studies concern a variety of
waste activities, it was possible to discern distinctions as
to the involvement of women and men. First the paper
introduces the concept of gender in development and goes on to
discuss the gender dimension in waste management (3). The
observation is then made that gender differences and other
social inequalities are maintained through the operation of
similar social mechanisms. Finally, the paper gives
recommendations for strategies to support the inclusion of
both women and men in waste management activities and to
reduce social inequalities.
Gender and Development
It is now widely accepted that incorporating gender
perspectives in development efforts is necessary for the
successful implementation of development programs. The focus
on gender rather than women makes it critical to look not only
at the category 'women' but at women in relation to men.
Gender concerns the way in which relations between women and
men are socially constructed. Men and women play different
roles in society, with their gender differences shaped by
ideological, historical, religious, ethnic, economic and
cultural determinants (Moser, 1993). The ultimate objective of
incorporating a gender perspective in development programs is
to promote the equality of women and men in society, and to
empower women to become protagonists in their own development.
It is necessary to translate knowledge on the all-persuasive
effects of gender into a new sector, urban waste management.
As in other sectors, e.g. provision of water supply, housing
improvement, the implications of gender must be "translated"
in terms of actual operations of the specific sector.
Such "translated" information may assist environmental NGOs
and development cooperation organisations to understand the
social and gender implications of their environmental work, as
well as to assist Gender and Development NGOs and scholars to
apply their ideas to waste issues in urban communities. At
present, there is a lack of common understanding between the
NGOs, local authorities and professionals in these two broad
fields, because the cross-cutting concerns of gender and waste
management are only beginning to be elaborated, and few
studies exist to-date on the interactions between them.
Gender Interest: Earning Income
Women have several roles in the household, such as earning
income and saving on expenditure, caring for members of the
family and doing the domestic chores. In this regard, waste
handling is an important source of income especially for the
poorer women (Huysman, 1994). In comparison to men, women are
mainly engaged in activities requiring lower levels of
education and skills (waste picking from dump sites; sorting
and washing, rather than working at machines) and a more
limited range of physical activity (collection, rather than
transportation). They also earn less than men, being more
vulnerable to exploitation by employers, contractors, and
waste dealers and intermediaries. Further, women do not have
the range of social-cum-business contacts over a wide area of
the city that men often have, and which give access to
personal credit and favourable market opportunities.
Although women are widely active in waste picking and
salvaging, micro-enterprises in the waste sector seem to be
more often initiated, operated and managed by men, although
there are examples of all-women's enterprises or cooperatives.
Several forces are likely to be at work here. First, since
waste handling offers significant income opportunities (in
Latin America, most workers involved in waste management and
recycling micro-enterprises earn at least double the monthly
minimum wage (IPES)), the field is subject to the prevailing
forces of competition and of inequality in a society.
Secondly, when the initiative is taken by a group of women,
they tend to involve or employ other women (UWEP). The same
happens when e.g. groups are formed for the purpose of
acquiring and managing micro-loans. The same applies to men's
enterprises.
Cultural barriers
When engaged as waste collection labourers, women are reliable
workers. As income opportunities for illiterate women are
scarce, they are prepared to overcome the barriers of distance
(a 4 hours' walk to and from work at the neighbourhood
designated for waste collection) or of culture (work in the
male world of the harbour) (UWEP). In certain cases, women who
see their general economic opportunities as being severely
constrained may make a greater effort and a longer-term
commitment to waste-related work, as compared to men, who will
leave at the earliest opportunity to move to higher-status
occupations (IPES).
Women as waste workers face a cultural bias in several ways.
Both men and women waste workers face the disrespect and
outright scorn of fellow-citizens, as handling untreated waste
materials is considered demeaning. In addition, women who are
cleaning public places, such as streets or bus stations, are
often insulted or harassed. Working in remote sites like waste
dumps or factory sites, they may be assaulted. And if women
who earn their own income with garbage collection transfer
their new-found self-confidence and financial autonomy into an
attempt to assert themselves within the family, e.g. by
claiming the right to spend their money as they see fit, they
may find themselves the victims of domestic abuse or the focus
of social conflict. Women may then have to learn (with the
help of a supporting NGO) to become more "polite" in their
assertiveness (UWEP).
Employment policies
Employment policies may have a negative effect on women. For
example, in some cities women form the majority of workers in
informal services to collect human excreta. At a certain point
in the development of a city, it can come to be in the
interest of overall urban waste management to integrate
informal sector services into the formal sector through direct
employment of waste labourers, or through sub- contracting to
small enterprises. But when a municipal department decides to
place the excreta collection workers on the municipal payroll,
somehow 70% of these employees turn out to be men (Gupta,
1998). Similar mechanisms may be in operation when small
enterprises obtain municipal sub-contracts in the waste
sector. In that case, competition for employment in these
enterprises may intensify, as they offer greater stability of
income, forcing women out.
Gender Interest: A Clean and Healthy Living Environment
Irrespective of the status of women outside of the household,
within the home women are widely accepted as the caregivers,
food preparers, and maintainers of the domestic environment.
In most societies, this role carries over to an accepted role
for women in community maintenance, often focusing there as
well on cleanliness, health, and order.
Therefore, any attempt to improve community urban services
must logically take special care to consult women, who are
almost certainly the ones most affected by changes or
improvementsE Taking household garbage to street corner dust
bins may be easy, but it is not so easy when the distance
between house and dustbin is too large. It is natural that
children fall ill, the burden of caring for sick children who
have been exposed to human fecal matter or vermin and disease
in uncollected garbage falls disproportionately on the
mothers, sisters, and grandmothers of those children.
Environmental Monitoring
The combination of her acknowledged role in community
maintenance and her tendency to stay at home in the community
while their men go out to work on a daily, weekly, or monthly
basis, makes a woman the logical choice for community
environmental monitoring and environmental and health
education. As the main socializer of her children, she is also
a logical choice to serve as an agent of change in waste-
related behaviour. Given the opportunity and resources, women
are effective as resident monitors of environmental
cleanliness. They can do this by walking regular rounds in the
immediate neighbourhood to check whether the waste collection
services have done their work well and properly. Women, as
immediate neighbours, may also encourage each other to
maintain cleanliness around the house and in the street, or to
pay for waste collection. They may begin to see this as a
shared concern through participation in a program of dialogue-
oriented environmental health education (UWEP).
Participation in Public Meetings and Committees
Public gatherings and committee meetings at the neighborhood,
community, ward and city level are often the means of
consulting the community about development priorities, and are
increasingly a key ingredient in setting urban development
agendas. In an era of increasing pressure on municipalities
for cost recovery and fiscal discipline, such consultations
also are likely to be seen as a means of securing a public
commitment to pay for the services. Here too, gender
considerations are important, as women and men may differ in
their priorities for new or improved services, preferences for
type of service, and willingness and ability to pay
installation costs and operating fees.
Several elements are at play when a community is consulted
about waste services. The first is that women and men are
likely to have different interests regarding environmental
improvement, based on the different use they make of the
immediate environment. The second is the nature of the
consultation process itself. This concerns, among other
things, the composition of the committees that takes
decisions, and the forms of representation between the lower
level and the higher level committees, the ways in which the
negotiation with the city is structured, and the time and
setting of the meetings, which may define the environment as
mensEspace, an environment in which women are not
comfortable or free to express their opinions.
The experience of the UWEP program, as well as other
development projects, would indicate that women are most
active at neighborhood or street level committees, which are
closest to their household management role. Participation of
women can be seen at the higher levels of community, ward, or
city-level meetings, sometimes even as leaders, it is much
less frequent; the numbers of women decline as the distance
from the community and the formality of the setting increases.
This means that while women may feel free to express their
opinions at the local level, these preferences and priorities
may get lost in the negotiation process, and the actual
projects may reflect womens concerns imperfectly, if at all.
In one community-based project initiated by the municipality,
the "community" was given the opportunity to make a choice
between two types of waste collection service, either a public
garbage container at street corners where residents should
bring their garbage, at a low price; or waste collection from
door-to-door at a higher price. The "community" preferred the
latter, but the composition of that community voiceEwas not
considered. No information is available on the considerations
leading up to this preference and whether they differed
between different social groups. Considerations could have
been: the distance between house and garbage container; which
household member is responsible for taking out the garbage;
and which member of the household is able and willing to pay
for the collection service.
In another community, where undrained storm water caused great
problems, the highest-level neighbourhood committee was given
the choice between two types of drainage system, a
sophisticated one, which would take 3 years before being
operational; or a simple one, to be operational before the
next rain season (4). The neighbourhood committee chose the
sophisticated one, while the women, who were not represented,
would have preferred the one which would alleviate their
environmental problems immediately.
In one case it was even reported that women had in the past
been members of the highest-level neighbourhood waste
management committee, but had all stopped their participation
at one time "because they were too busy with earning money for
their children to waste time on meetings" (5). One wonders
what the real reason behind such a move was.
It was observed in several cities that women- only meetings
tend to take longer than mixed meetings or those with only
men. One explanation offered by NGO staff is that women take
meetings as a social opportunity to talk about the family,
their children, their domestic problems etc. Another possible
explanation is that women continue a discussion until a high
degree of consensus is reached, while men are less concerned
about consensus, and so will settle an issue by voting or
letting the loudest voices prevail. A third possibility is
that women have less experience in meetings, and a more
limited exposure to process skills and rules of interaction in
public spaces, so it takes more time for them to reach
agreement.
Community consultation also concerns the degree to which a
process of empowerment takes place among the community groups.
Do men and women, and members of different social groups, have
equal opportunity to understand the issues involved, to
express their opinions and influence the outcomes? Simple but
crucial decisions in this respect might concern the choice of
meeting place and meeting time, language used, and division of
representative tasks, such as negotiating with the local
authorities. Another factor is the credibility of spokespeople
from different groups: if a women seeks to present the
opinions of a large group of women, is she ridiculed or
disregarded simply because she is a women, especially if the
opinion is contradictory to that held by the majority of men?
It is the task of NGOs and development support organisations
to ensure that the different participants have the opportunity
to participate in an equitable manner, and that the means used
to arrive at a decision adequately acknowledge that even the
definition of participationEneeds to take gender into
account.
Gender and Technology
When introducing new technology for sanitation, waste
collection, disposal, or recycling, gender-related questions
are critical to project success. For example, can women-owned
enterprises as well as men-owned enterprises afford the higher
investment? Are women-owned enterprises able to generate a
higher work volume to pay for this, to the same extent as men-
owned or mixed enterprises? Do women too have the managerial
expertise required for a greater volume of work? Do women as
well as men have equal access to the necessary training? Can
women as well as men continue with related income earning
activities, such as sorting the waste? How does the new
technology affect the health of women and that of men? Does it
create equal risks or offer equal protection against health
risks? Leaving such issues to the existing forces of
competition and inequality in a society will tend to
reinforce, or even increase, womens socio-economic
disadvantage. That is the lesson from the development of small
enterprises in other parts of economic life. Here lies a task
for NGOs and committed professionals, to design gender-
specific programs supporting the introduction of new waste
technology.
Waste and health
Gender specific health risks of working with waste materials
are not yet documented, but can be inferred. Data are
available showing that people who have physical contact with
human excreta or other raw waste materials contract diseases
like hepatitis and diarrhoea and suffer eye and skin
infections more frequently than people not so employed. The
gender division of labour, therefore, will strongly influence
mens and womens differential exposure to specific health
risks, and how this affects the workers' children.
A Gendered Definition of Waste
It has been stated above that women and men play different
roles in society, and that each has a gender-specific
combination of roles, shaped by a host of determinants
(cultural, economic etc.). Consequently, decisions taken by an
individual are the result of balancing the combination of
roles and expectations.
The word "waste" refers to something that is "no longer
serving a purpose", something "without value" (The Concise
Oxford Dictionary). Obviously, however, certain people in
certain circumstances consider waste materials as a resource
for their family, their livelihood, or their enterprise. So-
called waste materials may serve as a crucial resource within
households. For example, oily milk packages may be used as
fuel; leftover food may be fed to pigs and goats; discarded
cardboard may serve as walls and roofs of houses. If that is
the case, one can expect that men and women re-value waste
materials differently and see their usefulness for different
purposes, such as domestic utility, saving on household
expenditures, earning money, or other purposes. In short,
there is a gendered definition of "waste" and of "resources",
which must be reflected during any discussion of priorities
regarding waste management in the community consultation
process.
Similar issues are at stake in the field of gender and the
rural environment (Guijt, 1994). Adjusted to the urban
setting, the key questions are: - What natural and social
resources are important in local livelihoods? - Who uses which
resources? - Who controls decisions about how resources are
used? - Who is helping to sustain local resources and who
benefits from this? - How is the situation changing? Answers
to these questions must be sought through participatory
research in the very beginning of waste management projects.
Social Inequalities
Apart from gender, there are other factors too which cause
particular groups of people to be in a disadvantaged position
in society (Coady, n.d.). Such factors include age, membership
in a specific social group, religion, profession, caste, or
ethnic minority. Restricted access to education, or lack of
ownership rights, are also factors potentially causing the
exclusion of certain social groups from participation in
development. Such groups are in a disadvantaged position, in
the sense of being excluded from benefiting from development
opportunities, or even becoming the victims of development
when (unintended) side effects of projects force their groups
into even deeper poverty. Chances for social advancement
through using new technology for waste recycling, for example,
may selectively benefit only those people who are in a
favourable position, for example, those belonging to the
"right" social group, or living in the "good" part of town.
Similar forces are at work to reinforce the disadvantaged
position of women and other groups of people such as:
- the play of prevailing forces of competition and inequality
- being left outside the consultation and decision making
process in the community
- having no access to the capital required for new technology
- having no access to information and training
- living in inaccessible places
Social groups may be caught in a vicious circle which can
either be deepened or broken by outside intervention. Project
strategies can affect this circle.
The Role of NGOs and Development Support Organisations
The role of NGOs is important in supporting women and other
social minorities to ensure tat all benefit equally from
environmental improvement activities. Case studies showed that
NGOs are able to support the development or expansion of an
enterprise, and at the same time ensure that women get the
same opportunities as men to participate in the improved
enterprise. Similarly, the information-gathering, consultation
and planning process as related to waste activities can be
organised to facilitate the full and equal participation of
women and other social minorities. A variety of strategies may
have to be applied concurrently.
NGOs who address gender inequalities usually have committed
female staff members, whom they support with appropriate means
and strategies. The committed female staff themselves have
contacts with the national and international women's movement.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The implications of "gender" in waste management are not well
known. But going by the lessons from micro-enterprise
development, environment and rural development, urban
neighbourhood improvement, certain consequences can be
expected. Therefore,
- - The staff of support and development organisations should
become aware of possible implications through training
programs. This training should incorporate country-specific
conditions.
- - A gender perspective should be integrated in assessment
studies, planning, implementation and monitoring of waste
management projects. This should include a gender-specific
analysis of how available waste and resources are valued and
used.
New technology has an effect on the chain of waste management
activities beyond the specific activity for which equipment is
designed. Technology is also of social and economic importance
to women, men, and their households. Therefore,
- Organisations and experts should take the assignment to
design new equipment as the beginning of a process of
consultation with the "community" (defined as women and men,
and, when necessary, consultedEin single sex groupings),
and owners/workers of small enterprises. This should lead to
flexible implementation.
- Technical training may have to use a combination of
approaches in order to reach both women and men.
It has been observed that enterprises and improvement projects
which give a definite place to both women and men, are often
supported by NGOs. Therefore,
- The (female) staff of support organisations and local
authorities should be enabled to strengthen their gender
commitment through national and international contacts,
project experience and training.
- Gender consciousness and commitment to the promotion of
gender equality in waste management is an important
criterion in choosing partner organisations and local
experts.
Agencies aiming at waste management that contributes to the
reduction of social inequalities and the improvement of
environmental performance should:
- Identify the different groups in the affected communities,
and invite these groups to participate in a process to
analyse the distinguishing factors that maintain their
relatively disadvantaged position.
- In consultation with these groups, jointly develop
approaches to address these basic factors to enable the
disadvantaged social groups to benefit from new
opportunities in waste management.
- Prepare project approaches that address these basic factors
in combination with specific waste management requirements.
Notes
- Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at the
Programme Policy Meeting of the Urban Waste Expertise
Programme, organised by WASTE in Gouda, the Netherlands in
1997; and at the Gender, Technology and Development
Conference, organised by TOOL/TOOLCONSULT in Amsterdam, 1997.
- Maria S. Muller is a sociologist working at WASTE, Advisers
on Urban Environment and Development, in Gouda, the
Netherlands. Anne Scheinberg is an associate of WASTE, and is
currently a Fulbright Scholar studying the privatisation of
municipal waste management in Hungary and Bulgaria.
- Contributions to this paper from Usha P. Raghupathi,
Associate Professor at the National Institute of Urban Affairs
New Delhi, are gratefully acknowledged.
- Personal communication from Betty Kwagala, Makerere
Institute of Social Research, Kampala, Uganda. 5. Personal
communication from CPAC, Bamako, Mali.
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(Referred to in the text as IPESE
- Contact Information:
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