1. Women and men may perceive waste differently due to their traditional gender roles. Women are often responsible for household tasks like cooking and cleaning. As a result, women may have different needs for waste management services compared to men.
2. When voluntary community waste cleaning activities transition to paid work, men are more likely to get these jobs. Women also face more barriers to accessing credit to start waste businesses.
3. Formalizing the informal waste sector can marginalize women, who often have less visible or valued roles in waste sorting. It is important to consider how new policies and programs might negatively impact women.
1. Women and men may perceive waste differently due to their traditional gender roles. Women are often responsible for household tasks like cooking and cleaning. As a result, women may have different needs for waste management services compared to men.
2. When voluntary community waste cleaning activities transition to paid work, men are more likely to get these jobs. Women also face more barriers to accessing credit to start waste businesses.
3. Formalizing the informal waste sector can marginalize women, who often have less visible or valued roles in waste sorting. It is important to consider how new policies and programs might negatively impact women.
1. Women and men may perceive waste differently due to their traditional gender roles. Women are often responsible for household tasks like cooking and cleaning. As a result, women may have different needs for waste management services compared to men.
2. When voluntary community waste cleaning activities transition to paid work, men are more likely to get these jobs. Women also face more barriers to accessing credit to start waste businesses.
3. Formalizing the informal waste sector can marginalize women, who often have less visible or valued roles in waste sorting. It is important to consider how new policies and programs might negatively impact women.
1. Women and men may perceive waste differently due to their traditional gender roles. Women are often responsible for household tasks like cooking and cleaning. As a result, women may have different needs for waste management services compared to men.
2. When voluntary community waste cleaning activities transition to paid work, men are more likely to get these jobs. Women also face more barriers to accessing credit to start waste businesses.
3. Formalizing the informal waste sector can marginalize women, who often have less visible or valued roles in waste sorting. It is important to consider how new policies and programs might negatively impact women.
International Environmental Technology Centre (IETC) v.1.
Gender and Waste Management
Did you know…?
1. Waste is not necessarily a gender neutral concept.
Given women’s primary household responsibility (such as cooking, cleaning, laundry and family health) in many societies, women and men may have different perceptions and views of what is waste and what is not. For example, what looks like dirt to men could be compost or fertilizer to women. When launching a waste management project, it may be necessary to develop a locally valid classification of waste, taking into account different view of women and men regarding what materials are considered waste and what categories of waste are in use in local discourse and practice.
2. Women may have different needs and preferences on waste management services. Given different responsibilities, resources and barriers, women and men often have different needs and preferences. For example, while men may prefer a drop-off central collection point system, women, as the primary users of waste management services due to their responsibility of managing the household waste, may prefer door-to-door collection as they face time constraints due to their multiple roles and also as women in certain cultures have mobility limitations. In order to maximize the quality and efficiency of waste management services, it is important to know the needs and challenges of women.
3. Women’s gender responsibility for community cleanliness is often uncompensated, and
when these voluntary activities become paid, women are often left out. In the absence of adequate waste management services, in many communities women are often involved in voluntary community clean-ups, street sweeping, and even primary collection of waste. However, when these volunteer activities become legitimised and paid, it is overwhelmingly men who get selected for paid labour. Men are also more likely to become waste or recycling business owners, as women face greater constraints to access credit than men. The implications of this include the need for women to be consulted when improvement schemes are planned so that their insights and status are protected through, for example, deliberately preserving women’s access to cleaning activities or enhancing women’s access to credit. International Environmental Technology Centre (IETC) v.1.1
4. Formalising waste activities can also force women out.
Women working in the informal sector are also likely to be marginalised when the informal activities become formalised. In the informal sector, men usually take control over waste materials with higher value for recycling. It is also common to find that men mainly collect waste and sell the segregated materials, while women segregate the collected waste items at home and are responsible for disposing of those with no value. Such a division of labour makes women’s work invisible or less valued, resulting in a lack of recognition of the economic contributions by women and inclusion in public policies. Consequently, when waste-picking activities become legitimised, women tend to be excluded or do not enjoy the same opportunities as men. It is important to analyse the potential threat to groups of women and discuss special measures to safeguard women’s interests and protect their access to and control of the resources.
5. Gender aspects are left out in the selection of technology.
While selection of technology is often considered gender neutral, it is relevant to ask some gender questions. For example, in the case of technology for waste collection and recycling machinery, these include: Are women-owned enterprises able to generate a high work volume to pay for the higher investment to introduce new technology? Do women have equal access to the necessary training? Can women continue with income earning activities such as sorting the waste with the introduction of the new technology and services? To ensure that technological solutions do not result in reinforcing, or even increasing, women’s socio-economic disadvantages, gender aspects need to be addressed.
6. Women are exposed to specific health risks in various ways.
For example, as women are often care takers of the house and responsible for household waste management, they are more exposed than men to human excreta or other raw waste materials, thereby contracting diseases such as hepatitis, diarrhoea, and eye/skin infections more frequently. In many small-scale gold mining areas, women are engaged in the most dangerous jobs in a toxic environment since these jobs do not require physical strength. These include mixing the mercury in panning and burning the amalgam (mercury combined with gold containing ores) – with their children or babies often nearby. When women are exposed to bio-accumulative chemicals persistently, they remain in the body long after exposure and can be passed from mother Photo: WECF (2016) to baby.
All these lead to the need for gender perspectives to
be incorporated into waste management! International Environmental Technology Centre (IETC) v.1.1
Further Resources If you are interested in learning more, read the following resources, from which valuable insights were taken for this sheet:
GWA and WASTE. (2010). No Capacity to Waste: Training Module Gender and Waste. http://www.waste.nl/sites/waste.nl/files/product/files/genderwastemodule_final100831.pdf
Muller, M. and Schienberg, A. (1997). Gender and Urban Waste Management.
https://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/swm-gender.html
Scheinberg, A., Muller, M., and Tasheva, E. (1999). Gender and Waste: Integrating gender into community waste management: project management insights and tips from an e-mail conference, 9- 13 May 1998. http://www.ircwash.org/resources/gender-and-waste-integrating-gender-community- waste-management-project-management-insights
Woroniuk, B. and Schalkwyk, J. (1998). Waste disposal & equality between women and men. http://www.oecd.org/dac/gender-development/1849277.pdf
SECTION 2
GWA and WASTE. (2010). No Capacity to Waste: Training Module Gender and Waste. http://www.waste.nl/sites/waste.nl/files/product/files/genderwastemodule_final100831.pdf
Muller, M. and Schienberg, A. (1997). Gender and Urban Waste Management.
https://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/swm-gender.html
Scheinberg, A., Muller, M., and Tasheva, E. (1999). Gender and Waste: Integrating gender into community waste management: project management insights and tips from an e-mail conference, 9- 13 May 1998. http://www.ircwash.org/resources/gender-and-waste-integrating-gender-community- waste-management-project-management-insights
UNEP. (2015). Global Waste Management Outlook. http://web.unep.org/ietc/what-we-do/global-
waste-management-outlook-gwmo
Woroniuk, B. and Schalkwyk, J. (1998). Waste disposal & equality between women and men. http://www.oecd.org/dac/gender-development/1849277.pdf
SECTION 3
GWA and WASTE. (2010). No Capacity to Waste: Training Module Gender and Waste. http://www.waste.nl/sites/waste.nl/files/product/files/genderwastemodule_final100831.pdf
Scheinberg, A., Muller, M., and Tasheva, E. (1999). Gender and Waste: Integrating gender into community waste management: project management insights and tips from an e-mail conference, 9- 13 May 1998. http://www.ircwash.org/resources/gender-and-waste-integrating-gender-community- waste-management-project-management-insights International Environmental Technology Centre (IETC) v.1.1
UNEP. (2015). Global Waste Management Outlook. http://web.unep.org/ietc/what-we-do/global-
waste-management-outlook-gwmo
SECTION 4
AIT. (2015). Module 4, Course 4.3, Section III: Gender and Waste Management. In Curriculum Resource Package: Holistic Waste management, Waste for Sustainable Development (WSD) Asia Pacific University Consortium, 2069-2089. http://www.rrcap.ait.asia/Course%20Package/Module4.pdf
GWA and WASTE. (2010). No Capacity to Waste: Training Module Gender and Waste. http://www.waste.nl/sites/waste.nl/files/product/files/genderwastemodule_final100831.pdf
Scheinberg, A., Muller, M., and Tasheva, E. (1999). Gender and Waste: Integrating gender into community waste management: project management insights and tips from an e-mail conference, 9- 13 May 1998. http://www.ircwash.org/resources/gender-and-waste-integrating-gender-community- waste-management-project-management-insights
UNEP. (2015). Global Waste Management Outlook. http://web.unep.org/ietc/what-we-do/global-
waste-management-outlook-gwmo
UNEP. (2016). Recycling for Life – and a Living. In GENDER EQUALITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT: A Guide to UNEP’s Work, 30-31. http://web.unep.org/gender/resources/gender-policy-related- documents
SECTION 5
Muller, M. and Schienberg, A. (1997). Gender and Urban Waste Management.
https://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/swm-gender.html
SECTION 6
GWA and WASTE. (2010). No Capacity to Waste: Training Module Gender and Waste. http://www.waste.nl/sites/waste.nl/files/product/files/genderwastemodule_final100831.pdf
Muller, M. and Schienberg, A. (1997). Gender and Urban Waste Management.
https://www.gdrc.org/uem/waste/swm-gender.html
WECF. (2016). Women and Chemicals: The impact of hazardous chemicals on women – A thought starter based on an experts’ workshop. http://www.wecf.eu/download/2016/March/WomenAndChemicals_Publication2016.pdf
Photos All photos are by AIT (2015) unless otherwise specified.
