Paradox of gender mainstreaming strategies: why are they not fully realized in sexual reproductive health projects in Malawi?

Gender mainstreaming in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services like family planning in Malawi remains a significant approach in development. Yet, the expected gender related changes in gender mainstreaming focused SRH projects have been inadequate. The central aim of this paper is to expose the salient reasons behind the inadequate gender relations changes in the family planning (FP) SRH projects implemented by the local organisations. The study employed an exploratory design with more qualitative focus and a bit of quantitative approach. The empirical data for this article was collected in gender focused SRH projects implemented in selected communities in the last five years by three organisations in Malawi.4 The findings show that, the way project staffs understood the gender mainstreaming strategy affected how they designed and introduced the strategy. Subsequently, this affected the realization of the gender related changes from the projects. Furthermore, it was found that gender related changes were compromised where gender analysis had not been done. Further, the involvement and inclusion of men and women during the family planning projects implementation was mere tokenism. Therefore, the paper recommends that, a systematic process need to be in place when introducing gender mainstreaming in SRH projects for the organisations to achieve gender related outcomes. This entails ensuring that gender analysis is done prior to the SRH projects implementation to understand gender needs and before the staff involves men and women jointly during the projects cycle stages. This paper will contribute to the discussion on the determinants of gender mainstreaming strategy in SRH programmes.Keywords: Gender mainstreaming, sexual and reproductive health, family planning, gender relation

Public perception of drinking water safety in South Africa 2002-2009: a repeated cross-sectional study

Background: In low and middle income countries, public perceptions of drinking water safety are relevant to promotion of household water treatment and to household choices over drinking water sources. However, most studies of this topic have been crosssectional and not considered temporal variation in drinking water safety perceptions. Theobjective of this study is to explore trends in perceived drinking water safety in South Africa and its association with disease outbreaks, water supply and householdcharacteristics.Methods: This repeated cross-sectional study draws on General Household Surveys from 2002-2009, a series of annual nationally representative surveys of South African households, which include a question about perceived drinking water safety. Trends in responses to this question were examined from 2002-2009 in relation to reported choleracases. The relationship between perceived drinking water safety and organoleptic qualities of drinking water, supply characteristics, and socio-economic and demographichousehold characteristics was explored in 2002 and 2008 using hierarchical stepwise logistic regression.Results: The results suggest that perceived drinking water safety has remained relatively stable over time in South Africa, once the expansion of improved supplies is controlled for. A large cholera outbreak in 2000-02 had no apparent effect on public perception of drinking water safety in 2002. Perceived drinking water safety is primarily related to water taste, odour, and clarity rather than socio-economic or demographic characteristics.Conclusion: This suggest that household perceptions of drinking water safety in South Africa follow similar patterns to those observed in studies in developed countries. The stability over time in public perception of drinking water safety is particularly surprising,given the large cholera outbreak that took place at the start of this period