Just launched: Engaging men and boys for gender-transformative WASH

Water for Women and partners have contributed to the 20th edition of ‘Frontiers of Sanitation’ with an insightful look at successes and learning from Water for Women projects on how to engage men and boys in gender-transformative WASH.

Engaging men and boys is an exciting development in the WASH space; for too long our efforts to transform gender inequality focused too narrowly on women and girls.

Limiting ourselves to half the possible number of allies, partners for change, innovators, and leaders to address this issue held back progress, and also placed the ‘burden for change’ squarely on women’s shoulders.

Frontiers of Sanitation is Sanitation Learning Hub’s flagship series providing practical, evidence-based guidance and recommendations on essential emerging issues and approaches to programming and learning.

This issue of Frontiers of Sanitation explores the extent to which engaging men and boys in WASH processes is leading to transformative change in gender roles, attitudes, and sustainable change in reducing gender inequalities across households, communities, organisations, and policy.

This document is an update to Frontiers Part 1 produced in 2018. In Part 1, the differing roles of men and boys were reviewed in terms of objects to change (i.e. to change sanitation or hygiene behaviours), agents of change (in promoting improved practices), and partners for change in gender-transformative WASH processes.

This update reviews progress and provides practical examples of the opportunities and challenges with this endeavour. It also includes recommendations for those thinking about why and how to include engaging men and boys as part of their WASH programs.

Key recommendations include:

1. Define success
2. Address challenges to engaging men and boys in WASH
3. Build organisational capacity and strengthen partnerships
4. Set up monitoring systems that track progress towards objectives
5. Set up processes for knowledge sharing and learning

Download Resource: Engaging Men and Boys for Gender-Transformative WASH

Authors: Sue Cavill, Chelsea Huggett and Jose Mott 

Sanitation Learning Hub has also published a series of case studies from Water for Women projects to accompany this edition, read about practical examples from projects engaging men and boys in WASH focusing on work in Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Vanuatu and Nepal.

Download Case studies: Emerging Practice for the Engagement of Men and Boys in WASH

Authors: Godfrey Benjamin, Chelsea Huggett, Juhi Jain, Sunetra Lala, Relvie Poilapa, Elis Lee, Chloe Morrison, Novika Noerdiyanti, Rosie Sanderson and Proshanto Roy