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Operation and maintenance: women, what role?

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conference contribution
posted on 2018-02-12, 15:09 authored by Betty Yankson, Nii Odai Laryea, F. Mawuena Dotse
Operation and maintenance (O&M) of facilities is crucial to the successful management and sustainability of water supply and sanitation systems. Effective O&M results in improved health, socioeconomic and financial benefits. Nevertheless, it is pertinent to note that previously, O&M of water supply systems in rural communities in many developing countries including Ghana has been neglected. According to the WHO estimates, between 30 per cent - 50 per cent of existing water supply systems are not operational some three to five years after installation (McCommon et. al., 1990). This defeats the objective of water projects to improve the health conditions and well-being of beneficiary communities. The issue of operation and maintenance involves various actors including women. As the main beneficiaries of improved water supply, women offer the best incentive for the success of community management of facilities, hence the need to involve them in sector activities in this direction. It has been established through experience that women make excellent site managers and are very good and conscientious in technical maintenance especially in handpump projects as female mechanics (IRC, 1995). This paper seeks to discuss the current roles women are playing in the area of operation and management of rural water supply facilities, itemizes some of the factors that account for their limited involvement in key management activities, and finally, offers suggestions for increased involvement.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Research Unit

  • Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC)

Published in

WEDC Conference

Citation

YANKSON, B., LARYEA, N.O. and DOTSE, F.M., 1996. Operation and maintenance: women, what role?. IN: Pickford, J. et al. (eds). Reaching the unreached - Challenges for the 21st century: Proceedings of the 22nd WEDC International Conference, New Delhi, India, 9-13 September 1996, pp.158-159.

Publisher

© WEDC, Loughborough University

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

1996

Notes

This is a conference paper.

Other identifier

WEDC_ID:12576

Language

  • en

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    WEDC 22nd International Conference

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