What is the issue?

Insufficient infrastructure services have a disproportionate impact on women's and girls' time use.

UN estimate on average time for collecting water per day in Malawi:

Women: 54minutes
Men: 6minutes

Time women and girls around the globe spend on water collection:

200,000,000

Hours per day

Female professionals are underrepresented in infrastructure planning, design, and implementation.

Globally, women only make up 18% of staff in infrastructure ministries.

For women in particular, inadequate infrastructure exacerbates the impact of a crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic.

Probability of Parent’s Labor Force Participation with elementary school–age children in Maryland USA (School was mainly offered remote).

Mainstreaming Gender across the Infrastructure Lifecycle

Here are a number of steps to make infrastructure more gender-responsive.

To ensure that infrastructure addresses the service needs of men and women alike, gender considerations have to be systematically integrated into projects. The right policy, legal and regulatory frameworks can act as key enablers for mainstreaming gender into infrastructure development and ultimately improve the role of women as contributors to the sector. 

Strategy

A Gender Action Plan (GAP) is an important roadmap tool that outlines specific activities and tangible benefits. A GAP allocates financial and human resources and sets concrete targets along a timeline.

Operation and Decommissioning

Gender-Responsive O&M Mechanisms acknowledge the importance of community ownership and ensure that projects provide equitable services to everyone. Gender-responsive Monitoring and Evaluation includes the dissemination of lessons learned and an impact analysis.

Project Planning

A Gender Analysis (GA) provides an evidence-based project design that is responsive to contextual gender-needs. Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs) help to evaluate possible externalities of infrastructure projects.

Construction

Gender-Responsive Construction Supervision and equal employment measures not only enhance safety and security but also help integrate more women into the workforce through skills training and technical assistance.

Financing and Procurement

Gender-Sensitive Procurement integrates enabling requirements for women owned businesses/female workers. Gender-Responsive Budgets (GRB) address differentiated needs and interests by allocating expenditure towards the well-being and inclusion of women.

  • Strategy

    A Gender Action Plan (GAP) is an important roadmap tool that outlines specific activities and tangible benefits. A GAP allocates financial and human resources and sets concrete targets along a timeline.

  • Operation and Decommissioning

    Gender-Responsive O&M Mechanisms acknowledge the importance of community ownership and ensure that projects provide equitable services to everyone. Gender-responsive Monitoring and Evaluation includes the dissemination of lessons learned and an impact analysis.

  • Project Planning

    A Gender Analysis (GA) provides an evidence-based project design that is responsive to contextual gender-needs. Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs) help to evaluate possible externalities of infrastructure projects.

  • Construction

    Gender-Responsive Construction Supervision and equal employment measures not only enhance safety and security but also help integrate more women into the workforce through skills training and technical assistance.

  • Financing and Procurement

    Gender-Sensitive Procurement integrates enabling requirements for women owned businesses/female workers. Gender-Responsive Budgets (GRB) address differentiated needs and interests by allocating expenditure towards the well-being and inclusion of women.

Interested in learning more?

Thematic Brief: Gender-Responsive Infrastructure

By: The Solutions Lab - Scaling for Sustainable Infrastructure

This thematic brief informs why infrastructure is not gender-neutral and what we can do to make it responsive to the needs of women and girls.

READ FULL REPORT

Sustainable Connectivity - Closing the Gender Gap in Infrastructure

By: OECD

In this policy report, OCED informs about the different roles women have as users of and contributors to infrastructure.

READ FULL REPORT

Infrastructure for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

By: UNOPS

This report takes a sectoral look at gender and infrastructure and combines the topic with project case studies by UNOPS.

READ FULL REPORT

Gender and energy

By: European Institute for Gender Equality

This publication highlights that energy policy is not gender neutral. Practical examples are used to describe the integration of the gender dimension into the policy cycle.

READ FULL PUBLICATION

Relevant sustainability tools

SustainABLE

‘sustainABLE’ provides project partners, developers and others working in the development sector with practical actions that will help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). sustainABLE will initially focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment within infrastructure projects.


 

Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design

The Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design seeks to respond to the urgent questions: how might we design and plan cities that work well for everyone? What would such a city look like, and how would we go about creating it?


 

Gender Tool Kit: Transport

The tool kit provides guidance for transport sector specialists and gender specialists by drawing attention to the gender dimensions of transport, and how to mainstream gender equality issues into transport project design, implementation, and policy engagement. It guides users in designing project outputs, activities, inputs, indicators, and targets to respond to gender issues in transport sector operations.


 

Guides on integrating gender into infrastructure development in Asia and the Pacific

This practical series, jointly commissioned by UNOPS and UN Women, provides specific ‘how-to’ guidance together with checklists for ease of application, with context-specific Asia and Pacific regional information and case studies to showcase what socially-inclusive and gender-equitable infrastructure designs look like in reality.