Women at the forefront of inclusive WASH transformation in PNG

In Papua New Guinea, Plan International Australia’s Gender WASH Monitoring Tool is having a positive impact on community mindsets after being implemented by Live and Learn Environmental Education’s WASH team in seven wards across New Ireland Province. (Live & Learn PNG)

"Yumi olgeta wankain" - we are all equal

In Papua New Guinea (PNG), women, young people and people with disabilities are often excluded from decision-making. At both household and community levels, embedded social norms about household responsibilities of women, like water collection, cooking and cleaning, in particular limit their ability to engage in community leadership roles.

But over the past five years, Water for Women's project Resilient WASH in the Islands Region of PNG with Plan International and Live & Learn Environmental Education (LLEE), supported by the Australian Government, has been working to change this.

In New Ireland Province (NIP), different approaches had been helping to support women’s participation in decision-making, including young women undertaking traditionally male dominated plumber training, and using a Ladder of Participation tool to increase awareness of gender roles and responsibilities and discuss women's participation in community decision-making.

While these initiatives enabled women to participate in project activities and helped empower women to have a voice in community WASH assessment, planning and training, these efforts were not fully translating into inclusion objectives and aspirations in community WASH plans.

To address this, LLEE PNG team members were trained to implement Plan International's Gender WASH Monitoring Tool (GWMT). This tool aims to bring together a cross-section of community members, including women, young people and people with disabilities, to discuss WASH-related workloads and decision-making, resulting in the development of shared aspirations to improve gender equality in community WASH.

After implementation of the GWMT in seven wards of NIP, the team began to see a transformation. Participants started to realign community WASH priorities so that everyone’s needs were being met, including when implementing WASH improvements. Some households established daily rosters to ensure more equal distribution of responsibilities among family members, and in some communities, the 'obligatory' participation of one woman in community meetings was identified as tokenistic and insignificant. The Kadan / Livingko community introduced bi-laws for women leaders to attend to ensure equal representation and stronger voice, and the Village Chairman of Bura community has echoed similar suggestions for their community.

The project has directly benefited more than 55,520 people with improved WASH access, including more than 27,220 women and girls and 8,300 people with disabilities.

The Resilient WASH in the Islands Region of PNG was one of 20 Water for Women WASH projects to be delivered by civil society organisation partners in 15 countries in Asia and the Pacific from 2018-2022. Over the course of this first phase of the Fund, Water for Women supported more than 3.4 million people with improved access to inclusive WASH.

Building on this project, from 2023-2024 Water for Women is partnering with Plan International and LLEE to work with NIP and Autonomous Region of Bougainville government stakeholders and community actors to progress climate-resilient WASH, improved health, strengthened gender equality and greater wellbeing for more than 8,300 people across these regions.

An inclusive community is an essential building block of climate resilience. Socially inclusive and cohesive communities are naturally more resilient, including to shocks from a changing climate, and they are more likely to have effective and sustainable water and WASH services and systems. Climate change will escalate risks and exacerbate impacts, particularly on vulnerable populations – inclusive water and WASH are critical connectors for community resilience and the ability to adapt and respond to increasing climate hazards.