Sonal is saying they can't hear anything that's because nobody is speaking. can you hear me now?
Yes okay that's great so um I'm gonna start now we're gonna start recording so
hello everybody my name is Maria Elisa Christie. I'm the Director of women and gender
in international development here at Virginia Tech at the Center for International Research,
Education, and development and welcome to our third for the semester virtual women and gender in
international development discussion series. We're so happy that you all could join us thank you.
Please do note that our event will be recorded so if you don't want your image recorded you can
turn off your image so um but by staying on you're consenting to being recorded
and we will um we will be posting the the the talk on through vt works our library and everybody will
have access to that later so you're gonna be on it if you don't take your image off so um
I encourage everyone to check in via chat let's see we've had a couple not too many and tell us
something about yourself and where you're logging in from and maybe how you heard about this event
Mary's saying yes our speaker would like to know who's out there so um yeah I don't see I don't see
many people and I know we have actually a lot more people registered so I think some people
are going to be coming in late so we'll take just a little bit of time for people to do that
so I will say hi I am in Blacksburg
there's someone from British Columbia Hi Susan
okay I'm gonna um somebody from Columbus Ohio cool
more folks from Virginia Tech and from Ohio state
so you can keep your eye on who's signing in I'd like to um before introducing our statement
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the institutional and individual commitment to Ut Prosim, that I may serve in the spirit of community
diversity and excellence. We commit to advancing a more diverse equitable and inclusive community.
um so I just want to mention that the the full calendar in any updates for this year's discussion
series is on our website although this is the last one that we have programmed right now we're
currently setting up the spring um discussion series but they will be and if you are on our
listserv you will get information about that so this discussion Mary's presentation will last
approximately the discussion over approximately 40 minutes her presentation about 20 minutes followed
by about 20 minutes of discussion in q a um all dialing participants will be muted to enable the
speaker to present without interruption um you're welcome to post questions at any time
in the chat box throughout the conversation because we'll be tracking those and then I'll be
asking those uh Mary when she finishes so um if we have time and there's more questions after we get
through those in the chat we will ask you to raise your hand in the webinar controls and then unmute
you so that you can ask Dr. Rodriguez your question directly or make a comment directly towards the
end of the session. So in order for our discussion to be as rich as it can be we need everyone to
be respectful and treat each other with kindness and consideration without discriminatory behavior
so again as I said this is going to be recorded and you'll have access to it via our website or
directly through our library at the end we'll send out a link to a survey please do answer
that it's very very important to us um and then if you are a tweeter please tweet tagging
@wgd_vt okay now I will introduce our speaker the reason you're here
Dr Mary Rodriguez is an associate professor of community leadership and development at
the Ohio State University. As a leadership scholar and practitioner she focuses on
supporting communities and change processes at the individual household and community levels.
She strives to develop research-based solutions to build more sustainable and resilient communities
through the exploration of behavior change and leadership development in the United
States through community engaged scholarships. She has worked with new American populations
investigating the social system's impact on access to resources. She's also worked internationally in
Latin America the Caribbean sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East investigating adoption of
innovations household food security and resilience and governance of water systems. The title of her
talk today is women water and transformative gender research so please welcome Dr. Rodriguez!
All right hello everyone I am very happy to be here with you today to share my presentation and
to tell you a little bit about my research and the work that I do so just checking Maria Elisa
can you see my screen? okay wonderful I'll go ahead and start my timer then as Maria Elisa said my name
is Mary Rodriguez my pronouns are she and her I am a first generation American and a Latina woman
I'm originally from Texas and an associate professor here at Ohio State university. I start
with a few of my identities because that's the lens through which I do my work the the passion
that I do that I bring to my work and the reason that I do what I do. So let me tell you a little
bit about women, water and gender transformative research, a few things that I want to cover today
during our quick 20 minute session is to talk to you a little bit about the role of women in water
what does this look like for many women around the world? how do you um how can we harness and and
better the impact that we have on women and water resources? and then and what we do in development
for the lives of women and girls around the world and then what is gender transformative research
and how can we do this uh to change the dynamics of of these women living in these scenarios?
Before I start I want to give some acknowledgements really quickly
to our research group and our funders Dr Rebecca Giannotti, Dr Amanda Robinson, myself and two PhD
students Rafael Quijada Landaverde and Vinicius De Mello were essential in completing this project.
It is it was funded by USAID in partnership with the national governments of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda
and they were produced by the governance research on water systems
project and is a responsibility of the global environment and technology foundation and these
views of course do not necessarily reflect USA the US government or any partner governments
but I am excited to tell you some of the findings that we had and some of the work that we did and
and what this looks like in the countries of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. So to start I want to
give you a few facts about women and water did you know that women and children spend a collective
200 million hours collecting water that's um and that's per day actually on an average woman
in low middle income countries can walk up to six kilometers which is approximately 3.5 miles a day
carrying 20 liters of water as you see the girl here with the bucket on her head
in some areas this journey can take up to 15 hours per week. 15 hours per week collecting water that's
a significant amount of time that women and girls are spending on a resource that is absolutely
necessary for the household's well-being. Did you know that in 2020, 2 billion people which
is 26 percent of the population lack safely managed water resources? Safely managed water
resources are defined as an improved drinking water source that is access accessible on the
premises available when needed and free of fecal and chemical contamination. These improved sources
can be piped water, boreholes, protected dug wells or springs and packaged or delivered water.
However when you start to break down those numbers in sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people lacking
safely managed water actually increased since 2020 over 40 percent and of those 2 billion 771 million
people lacked even basic drinking services and 8 in 10 of them are in rural areas in the world.
And one more did you know that for sustainable water resource management, local communities and
especially women must be involved and what does this look like the sustainable goal number six
from the united nations water and sanitation for all includes a sub-target to support and
strengthen the participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management
including communities. It sounds very simple but fewer than half of the reporting countries
have laws or policies specifically to include women's participation in the management of their
water and sanitation resources. Only 14 of 109 countries reported high levels of community or
user participation for collaborative management and decision making. There is an absolute lack
of women and communities integrated into the sustainable management of their water resources.
There is a significant lack of financial and human resources to make this even happen.
Approximately 6 out of 10 countries reported that the resources needed for community involvement
are less than 50 percent, that's actually needed to support community involvement. So when we start
thinking about the impact that water has on the livelihoods of women of their families of their
health and their well-being we start to think about what can we do? Women risk a lot to be able
to go get water for their families again something that is absolutely essential to their livelihoods.
They face dangers on these journeys crossing conflict areas, risk of physical or sexual
assault and risk of traffic accidents having to cross major roadways to be able to get water.
This is where our project came in. How can we better understand sustainable solutions
for the work that we do when it comes to bringing water
to semi-arid areas and arid areas in specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Grows, the governance research on water systems project had an overarching goal to understand
the governance challenging facing communities and explore examples of successful responses to them.
We look to specifically when looking at water governance through the lens of four different
governance areas transparency, accountability, trust and equity, I want to tell you a little bit
about each one of these sections and then tell you specifically what we found as it relates to women.
Really quickly some of the main factors that we found in our research we did interviews
and focus groups with users stakeholders at the government non-governmental level
to better understand what was going on what what does water governance actually look like
on the four levels of water governance that we explored. We found that transparency in the system
when users were aware of their money and how it was being spent was more likely to increase
their willingness to pay for water and trust the provider. So transparency was in communication
where is the water, where is how good is the water the quality of the water, where is the money going
to, how much are we going to have to spend if we put in labor, what does that equate into
the the ownership of this water source? So this transparency of information was really really
essential. We also found that accountability accountability from both the water users to
the managers but also to the providers and back we saw that it was absolutely necessary for trust
and increasing a community sense of ownership and involvement of the system itself led to
greater accountability between the users and the service providers in a bi-directional manner.
In order to help help to increase the governance the good governance of of a water source we found
that accountability actually trends really touched all these areas of governance in order for its
for it to happen and to increase sustainability. We also looked at trust and trust was mostly focused
on the trustworthiness and reliability of the water system rather than the quality of water.
Users found that they trusted the water that was coming out of the boreholes or the systems
the piped water systems and schemes. It was not necessarily about that it was more about how it
was actually being managed. Was it reliable? Would there be water when we needed it and could we trust
the people that were managing the water source? Issues were identified in the ability of a user
and their user the community to trust the service providers attendants and managers
of the water system. Here we saw if what if money was being collected and transferred from hands
from a person to a person, it could really be a breakdown in barriers of trust because they
didn't know would that money actually be kept the way it needed to or used the way it needed to for
the for the management of the water system. They also found that different technologies like water
meters and smart meters that kind of thing would help with the trust increasing the trust. I knew
how much consumption I was taking, I knew how much money I was spending, it made me the user much more
accountable and and to trust uh the system that we were using. And finally we looked at equity and
this was really interesting when we sought equity we wanted to understand how are people involved in
the decision making but interestingly enough in our findings in both our stakeholder interviews
and our user interviews with communities we found that they described equity in terms of assuring
access to all people and equity in decision making but mainly in the participation of women on the
boards just having them let's say like they would say 50 of the board members needed to
be women. That's really great but did it actually equal participation and I'll talk a little bit
about that when I talk about the specific uh findings that are um associated with women.
So when we found these government, these governance challenges we tried to understand
what does this look like if it's a if it's a community managed system or if it's a government
managed system or a private entity and all what we found is that all four of these pieces actually
transcended all of those different types of management schemes in order for in order for these
things to be sustainable we had to incorporate the community and the community's voice a lot more
for the long term work and water governance. So as it's related to women in water there were a few
things that we specifically found excuse me in our in our interviews and in our focus groups we ask
women only focus groups we ask questions to mixed gender focus groups we ask questions
to better understand what is the impact that bringing water to a household or to a community
less reducing the distance that women had to walk what does that do for women in general? We
see that there is a reduction in time spent collecting water women were spending up to
three hours or more a day trying to go and collect water and then we saw them collecting
water much closer to their homes. Some of these pipe schemes like you see here at the hospital
this is actually at a regional at a little local hospital excuse me um but these piped
water schemes or at least these communal water points were much closer within you know a few
hundred meters of the house if not actually routed to the house. So a lot more time spent uh
not collecting water saved collecting water we also saw increased safety while collecting water.
One of the communities that we spoke to was right on a very very major road two-lane road
that was very very busy and people sped through the area and they had several accidents of
women and youth trying to cross the street with buckets of water not being able to move very fast
and so you had traffic accidents. One of the things that they highlighted was an enormous
change in the livelihoods of women and youth not having to cross that major street anymore.
The accessibility of water just on their side of the street, that was a significant finding for them
significant change. We also found that women's participation does not um is not equitable, does
not equal decision making um so here we see that just because women are present on the
board doesn't necessarily mean that they engaged in the decision making. The women told us that
they were present but often times their voices were unheard or they didn't feel comfortable to express
themselves on the boards and so just because they were present didn't mean at all that they were
actually engaging in in the decision-making or the management of their water resources.
This was an interesting finding. One of the things that we heard in one place in Tanzania and it this
actually we didn't hear it again in other places but here they talked about the reduction in
domestic violence. Men actually mentioned that there was less domestic violence in
the household because women had more time to do all the other things in the household
and because they were saving time on water collection they had the opportunity
to do other things. So according to the men there was a reduction in domestic violence.
An interesting finding and one that I have a lot of questions about
and the last one is decision making for water resources. We also talked to women who said this
is great we're really excited and we're very happy that water has now been brought to our
village or brought to our homes but now we have to consider and not that they didn't have to before
but now when we're paying for water we need to consider what are the needs
immediate needs of my household, is it water for agricultural or garden production as well as the
the cooking and the cleaning and the consumption of water in my household. So they were having to
determine where do I get water for what purposes if I'm going to pay for water is that going to be
solely for cooking cleaning and consumption and then I go down to the creek or to an um to an
open well and I take water from that to water my garden but then I'm going two different places
and then I'm having to manage to keep the water separate. So we see that this is actually an issue
for women now starting to have to think okay how do I manage the money in my household, how do I
pay for the water that I need and what does that look like? Where do I use those water resources?
So when we think of gender transformative research I want to switch gears here a little bit and just
kind of say that with a caveat that the work that we did was not gender transformative
yet and this is what I'm really hoping to get at the work that we did was very much
focused on being gender responsive. Our analysis of gender and identity was incorporated into both
research and the programming practices. Our case, there was no programming practices but we hope
that the work that we did will actually lead to programming practices by our partners in the field
in these three different countries, but we were gender responsive in our work and I want to talk
to you a little bit though about what it looks like to be gender transformative. We want to move
excuse me from being gender responsive to being gender transformative.
This work is hard and it takes a lot of practice and time but it's trying to understand
the root causes behind inequalities and the research can lead to actual shifts
and gender relations interpersonality and or at the structural level if you study uh
agency and empowerment some of these words are probably very familiar to you.
Structure and power are a piece that are pieces that cannot be ignored when we talk about women.
So gender transformative research is really trying to change relationships, change relations
to promote equity to reach desired outcomes. It examines and questions the most fundamentally
embedded norms, attitudes, behaviors and practices and the related imbalances in power that create
these gender dynamics and difficulties for women in their communities. Gender transformative
research takes a lot of time and propulsiveness in the design and the implementation of this work.
So gender transformative research is really where we want to be but oftentimes as academics or on
short tour on short term grants it's very difficult to be gender transformative when
the outcome is not always a programmatic one. So I just want to say that gender transformative
research is an opportunity to strengthen the work that we do for and with women but
it is something that you have to be cognizant of and be prepared for to do transition to
actually perform gender transformative research. You want to incorporate the gender analysis
and feminist principles talking about structure power and equality and agency. For example,
at the beginning and in the design of the research process you must build
collaborations and partnerships with people that will advocate and use the research results for
the change of the community. You want to define empowerment and this is really really important
not by your lens of empowerment but based on the participant and contextual input what do they
believe empowerment looks like for those women in their communities and in their households
and finally you want to focus on incremental change towards gender transformative
change. You don't want to just have an end point you want to make sure that your research can
add to a a plan of change that actually has steps to it and increments. You don't wanna
you can never just arrive at an end point but rather try and really be cognizant of
this incremental change and how to facilitate that.
So what does this look like then when it comes to this research as I mentioned
this research in and of itself was not gender transformative it was very gender responsive
but what could this look like in terms of what we found and what we're looking at.
We can examine what structures think laws and policies for example
need to change to allow for women's true participation in managing water resources.
This is going to take an entire research project to look at what does the community value in terms
of women's participation and engagement in in decision making what are the norms surrounded by
that those things can lead to changes in laws and changes in policies for communities and societies.
Another question might be what systematic changes are needed for both men and women to create
community and societal changes to support women and girls as it relates to improved water access.
At the end of the day gender transformative research has to include both men and women
in this process. You have to include folks of different genders to be able to do this.
Societal and community change is very difficult taking a systems approach and thinking
what are all the ways that we need to think about women in water. An example of this was the finding
on domestic violence you wouldn't think domestic violence with water perhaps or agricultural needs
you should think about agricultural needs with water but the decision making as far as like
where do we route our resources our very limited resources. So these are opportunities for us to
expand the work that we've already done and actually create gender transformative research.
All right I did 17 seconds left so I did pretty good Maria Elisa.
I am very thankful to be here and I really look forward to our discussion today. Thanks so much!
That's excellent ,thank you so much um well we've gotten a couple of questions not too
many questions so I'm hoping that um that you guys will be motivated either to write them in
the text or to raise your hand. um so one so Sonal first asked uh just a quick question was the
work in Tanzania and Daar es Salaam? okay great question No the work in Tanzania was not in Daar es Salaam the
work in Tanzania was actually in rural Tanzania, in the Kilimanjaro region and a few other regions
that are struggling with with water resources and arid areas in the country. So we did not
look at any urban centers at all. It was all rural communities. Okay and then someone asked another
question that's not really related to water but I'm gonna ask it and it is do they understand
what constitutes domestic violence or sex abuse? Yeah good question that was not in the purview
of our research therefore we did not ask those questions the way that it was worded to us was
there is a reduction of arguments and beatings um in the household so we actually qualified the the
the terminology and the words that were being used as domestic violence.
But that's a really good question and I think as I said there's opportunities to do more research and
and to really delve further into what we found and some of those questions that we wish we
would have asked or had opportunities to explore further. I feel like every time you do a project
there's things that you wish you would have asked or wish you could have incorporated.
Going back to the community is oftentimes either very difficult or impossible
to get more information and so I think that for further research it'd be very interesting to
further explore the connection between domestic violence and and water resources. I think that
that would be really interesting and a part of that would definitely be understanding what
does that look like in the household and in that context in that context. What what do they believe
is inappropriate behavior and not and then that's also where gender transformative research comes in
because that's where we can start to to see what are the norms and behaviors and um
cultural attitudes towards the relationships physic physical you know in this sense
between men and women in the household and how can we strive to change that
if women are desiring that that is not what they want for their well-being. So it you know
it definitely needs to come from that community as I mentioned before one of the things in strange
transformative research is to ensure that women's empowerment is defined by the women themselves
because they will be the ones to say this is what this needs to look like for our community
and it's not a global north definition that's being brought upon that community.
Great! Thank you um Daniel, I'm going to ask you to go ahead and speak your own questions so we
can actually transition into people using their mic raising their hand. You have to you know you
have to use the the reactions button at the bottom of your screen to then pick.
Let's see I guess we have to get into where you can see people but anyway Daniel if you
could go ahead and speak your question and then others you're welcome to speak your question.
or also to um okay I can read Linda's. I have one new one, but Daniel go ahead please.
Sure um thanks Mary. I really enjoyed um the the presentation and and how you really discuss
the importance of distinguishing between gender responsive and and gender transformative research.
I was wondering though if you could just elaborate a little bit more on your work
with your team and that process of starting to shift that your your team's thinking on gender
transformative research and and starting to expand those boundaries just really excited to hear more
from your experience. Thanks Daniel for that question um you know my my goal is to ultimately
be able to do more gender transformative research but the reality is a lot of times
the capacity of grants, of timing it really lends itself a lot easier to do gender responsive work
and so this is a journey for me. I want to just be very clear about this it is something that I
am constantly working on and constantly seeking to improve in my own practices
making sure that that I build bigger bigger and deeper collaborations with our community
um and our advocates in that community as well will really impact the way that the
research can transform the livelihoods of women changing the structures that actually prohibit
or inhibit women's engagement decision making agency over the resources that they have access to.
I think that this is a great opportunity to get people thinking more about it just like
I am. How can we do this better? Thankfully a lot of the funding agencies are getting
more used to this language of gender transformative research and work
and so incorporating programming or incorporating the way that this research will direct
directly apply to programming is something that we need to do better in our grant applications and
also advocating from usaid and other funders so to be completely honest it's still a journey for me
but it is something that I'm thoughtful about and I want to just kind of say something
about the work that I do I most often and and I most often strive to incorporate
feminist critical theory into the work that I do but feminist critical theory is different
and incorporating that lens is different than actually doing
transformative work. And so I just want to say that out loud because what I do and working
and understanding advocacy and power dynamics and structures that are a part of the community
can really stop oftentimes at the theoretical basis and it it's in theory. These are the things
that we need to look at and in theory these are the things that we found that are important to
this community for change but transformative research actually takes that next step and says
okay here are the things that we found, what does the community themselves help us to understand
that can go into programmatic programmatic efforts to make these systemic changes. um
and so that's you know I just want to kind of put that out there that you know you can you can bring
that important feminist lens to your work but that step that next step for gender transformation
uh gender transformative research is um not often taken and can be found as a difficult one.
Okay so we've got we've got three questions right now one from Linda
and then we have I see well two people have raised their hand so Linda has asked um
would there be government and non-government brands available for non-profits
for to further research involving women in water? and how can these be easily accessed?
Linda, what a great question! um yes I believe that women in water you know if you look
at the funding at the funding available in different countries especially
as you look at programmatic areas within the big funding agencies or if you look at
what countries themselves are saying are needs for their communities, women
and the water the concept of understanding women in water especially as it relates to wash
water and sanitation and hygiene services you can see that there is a lot of opportunity to do more
research in this area as far as funding goes. This is always the difficult part funders are
very interested in certain programs and those initiatives and so you'll have to really be
you have to explore to see what kind of funding is available and
I'm not excellent at talking about funding but I see that actually my colleague Rebecca Giannotti
has her hand up and she might be a really great resource. She is actually one of the
the folks that works for our global water institute here at Ohio State University.
um Maria Elisa can we go ahead and just unmute Rebecca? She might have an answer to this question.
Yes she's already unmuted, she had already asked to speak before so I think hopefully we'll be able
to hear her. Rebecca can you speak? Yes I'm here, I haven't actually planned to speak about the grant.
Her presentation prompted another question for me and as someone who has been in this project, I
think that speaks to to Mary's great presentation um regarding donor funding. My familiarity is with
um the bilateral donors agencies like USAID and I am starting to see them incorporate um more
not just within their calls for for various programs you know a little
section saying and tell us about gender but to really make it sort of front and center
as as part of how you design the proposal. So I am starting to see that come forward, I admit I'm not
familiar with the European agency funding and what that might look like in the gender space
but from what I see, it is something that the agencies are
starting to value more in a way that they haven't in the past.
All right, awesome thanks for chiming in there back!
Let's see I'm trying asking to unmute Alastair. I think you have to unmute yourself.
I have can you hear me yes yes um Mary, I want to thank you really sincerely um I'm struggling
with exactly what you're talking about in terms of gender responsiveness versus gender transformation.
um and you articulated the imperative and the ways of distinguishing between them really well
but I did want to follow up on the comments from you and from Rebecca, because yes certainly in the
Canadian scene we are seeing granting agencies do more than pay lip service to gender but they
go to what they see as the gold standard which is gender transformation as the first imperative that
they want to achieve and it's certainly been a struggle to get them to understand that to get
to gender transformation there's a lot of steps you need to go through with the community not um
in perhaps in your own mind but with the community because one of the issues is understanding
gender inequality. When you're talking to the community is is that a fair observation?
I think so um you know the a lot of the times and I'm just gonna speak from my perspective Alaister,
but as a faculty member my job is to you know work at the university sixty percent of my time
which doesn't mean a lot to people outside of a university but the majority of my time is teaching
and then another portion is research and the outreach and the programmatic efforts
aren't always um you know the the the main bread and butter for the work that I do. And so as a
researcher at a university I don't have oftentimes the ability to build the depth of connection that
I need in order to do this transformative work. I have to rely and I always partner
with people on the ground they're you know they know their realities and they're the gatekeepers
um for the community engagement um and so that you know I can't I can't stress enough the importance
of their engagement but even then so even just kind of involving them in the research process
and involving in the development of the questions and involving them in this process at the end of
the day they're not often the ones that are going to be making the changes needed in that community.
They can highlight some leaders uh important leadership that that needs to be at the table for
um this discussion and the and and to kind of um take on the findings as well um but sometimes that
step isn't taken. And so what I am trying to do in in the work that that I hope to do moving forward
because like I said I am still very much working on this. It is like you said the gold standard
but how the heck do we do it and how do we do it well and so um what the things that I want
to make sure that I do in the future is as I'm incorporating this on the ground entity and and
change agents of that community I want to make sure that they're involved in understanding what I
find through this research. What we what we find through the co-development of the research.
Those things you need to take ownership um and and and how then do you change dynamics within
your community um and and and I guess a lot of the a lot of the times we say gender transformative
research but we're not the ones that need to be making the change for those communities
and oftentimes funders want to take credit for change in communities you know they want to see
how did my money help that community be better but at the end of the day that's that's almost a very
colonial um because you know we are we should be empowering the communities to make change for
themselves and that's why when Maria Elisa read my bio, I am very much a proponent of evidence-based
research-based solutions. If we continue to do research we can really impact the work that we
do increase sustainability of the work that we do and really just continue to move more towards
transforming communities and the livelihoods of women. So Alistair you and I, we can talk about
this all day long because I've got so many ideas. I would love to touch base at a different time but
this is definitely something that is a challenge, and particularly a challenge for faculty. Really
seeking to make a difference in this space just because of where we work and what we do. I hope you
thank you I hope you don't mind if I do follow up with you because this would be a great
conversation for me to have. Thank you thank you. Great! and can we I'm sorry um Rebecca
actually had a question. Right I know so I was gonna I asked her to unmute herself to actually
ask her question and then we have one from um so go ahead Rebecca. Thank you, I apologize for jumping
in again as someone who also worked on GROWS, I feel like I should leave the mic to other people
um but a couple of uh two points occurred to me Mary as you were talking and one was that
um one of the things that came out of from GROWS was the very strong influence of different
contextual factors um social, economic, political institutional um the three countries that we
worked in and knowing that you work a lot with new American populations as well, I was wondering um if
you could speak to geographic context and how that matters for designing transformative research and
sort of coupled to that the other part of context is knowing it's working in agriculture and this
was a water project. How does other kinds of um of sectoral or other types of context
matter for transformative research? Yeah thanks Beck for those questions um the the context is
absolutely important and it has to be you have to consider not just the context of the community
with their culture and you know all of their norms but you also have to understand the context of the
country. So across the three different countries we saw that water was under different ministries um
even and then people who were responsible for water at the rural and local level
were different, were different entities. It might have been local government, it might have been
um the you know the actual all the way up to the ministry um and so those things actually have a
huge impact. You also um brought up the politics. Our colleague Amanda Robinson um studies politics
and she mentioned many times she said you know the politics of a country can actually really
impact the water resources that are going to an area or even the management um the way that
the different governments will change and say well this management now needs to be a conglomeration
of um community managed systems or it needs to be under a government system or it needs to be taken
on completely by a non-governmental or private business and so all of those contexts make a huge
difference when it comes to water governance and when you're thinking about gender transformative
work. You can't ignore all of those pieces because those structures impact the laws, the policies
that are actually implemented at the local level for the well-being of the woman and her
agency to to engage in decision-making and access to resources. So
yeah you have to understand all of these very intricate multi-level contexts to see
how can you actually implement change at the local level. That's something that our project
did I believe very well. We looked at absolutely as many levels of of context um to the situations
that has significant impact on the work on the findings that we found in each country. Your
second question about multi-sector collaboration or considerations for gender transformative work
that's what I mentioned kind of briefly at the end but the importance and the essential
nature of looking a gender transformative work through a systems thinking or systems perspective
is absolutely essential. You cannot make change in one area and not consider the way it's going to
have an impact in other areas. So just like I said earlier in that gender transformative work of men
and women working together, and what do we have to change for them to actually
be able to make changes in their societies, you have to consider all of these different pieces
all the way from the gender uh relationships and the household to the decision making with
agriculture. What impact does that maybe have for um for um what does that maybe have for
markets um and economic development um what does that have to do with mortality and infant
health. So there's a lot of different dynamics that you have to consider for
gender transformative research. Thank you for asking that question because I don't think
I talked about that enough but the importance of that is essential. Okay we have um and then Angela.
If I didn't pronounce your name right I'm very sorry. Please introduce yourself
Oh yeah you got it right
so it's a french pronunciation but yeah you got it right so um thank you um for the presentation
I find it very interesting. So I have a question uh as you mentioned that
um or you wish to get to get like your findings taken into account for systemic changes
so I was wondering if you guys could use platforms like the water world waterfront
that will be organized in Senegal. um I think it would be great if you guys could have like uh
time spot during this you can explain these results responding to authorities and also
you know what organization that will be gathering there that's it. Thank you very much for that
comment. I think that um getting our research out there is absolutely essential um and and
and I will say that we you know the the research is contextually based and so it is findings from
very specific case studies within Tanzania, within um Uganda and within Kenya. They are
not representative of the entire country itself. They're not even representative of the regions,
they were very focused on certain case studies because they were unique and we sought to better
understand their specific context. So I think that presenting the approach that we took and
also presenting some of the general findings as opportunities for further research in areas
like Senegal, I think would be very interesting and I think it would challenge and have an
opportunity for researchers and folks working in the areas of water in Senegal and other
West African countries. Then I think you know to begin the discussion and to think about
like we like I talked about here gender transformative work and what that could
actually look like um so thank you so much for that comment and if you want to connect with me
or my colleague Rebecca Giannotti on this work and and presenting this work somehow to other
stakeholders I think we'd be very happy to do that. Oh great yeah, definitely I would appreciate
working with you guys. I found this interesting and it's the kind of you know the same scenario
that we can observe in many countries like uh in West Africa. So yeah definitely I'd be
with you thank you and by the way. I'm also a student in the I was a graduate student
in the water ideas here at Texas. It would be a great occasion to work with those guys as well.
Great! thank you very much. Okay let me read a question from Angela. Angela her
question is about resources to learn more about gender transformation particularly with women
and girls and water. So people, publication, geographic locations um where um let me
see I got distracted and do you have a look at the locations where projects are having impacts?
She says in her experience the young girls carry much of the water in one location in Ethiopia's
dry highlands. Girls spend six hours per day fetching water. How can we lighten their loads?
So that's an excellent question and to be completely transparent I don't know
all the things that are happening out there to direct you but I will actually drop in the chat
one of the most impactful I believe gender transformative or a really great
example of how to actually conduct gender transformative work. I'm going to go ahead and
just drop that in the chat for everybody because I think that this would be a resource that is
readily available to folks if you want to learn more and I think in a response to that question
the challenge is up to us to do more of the stranded transformative work um and then see the
greater impact that we can create because there's actually not a lot of this happening and not a lot
of it is being conducted truly transformative. It's still again more of that gender responsive work.
Okay um unless I've missed something I don't see another question in the chat but remember
this is this is actually called the women gender development discussion series so
really it's hard because we're in zoom to get this feeling of us sitting together
in one room with food and coffee and tea like we would have at the
library here at Virginia Tech normally without COVID, um but in those cases people would come
up and talk to the speaker at the end so I want you to have that feeling. We still have
we did put the link in Lumbini put the link in for the survey and it really is important to us.
It's always amazing how few people do that survey, so really please do the survey. It's very short.
um but this is your chance to also speak with Mary. so um you know you might have opinions and not
just questions so just stay on topic please the broad topic women gender transformative research
um but just uh raise your hand if I don't see any hands raised am I missing a hand no
I shocked you guys into silence
I want to just say as we as we kind of wrap up this part
good research leads to a lot more research a lot more questions and so that's something that
I take away every time I do research and especially when I'm really doing
gender responsive. In the evening so hello to everyone you might be the farthest