DIPLOMARBEIT - ÖH Uni Wien - Universität Wien

The target group of this thesis are women. They are the most affected group in terms of waterand sanitation because in traditional societies in developing countries it is often assumed thatit is the responsibility of women to deal with water issues. It is them who have to walk longdistances to fetch water in order to be able to do the cooking, cleaning, washing and bathingof the children. Nevertheless, they are rarely included in management and organisation ofwater issues. This thesis now wants to find out and analyse how increased participation ofwomen in water projects can empower them economically, politically and socially. Thereforeit was decided to conduct the field study in the WATSAN project of AMINA and KNEF inNorthern Kenya. This project is ideal for the aim of the thesis because it has a gender balancepolicy which demands that out of six water committee members, three have to be women.Hence, it was possible to interview women who are actively participating in watermanagement and water committees as well as men who experience the outcomes of thecooperation with women and thus get a picture of the actual situation, problems and possiblefuture improvements.How these interviews were conducted and which other methods were used is explained in thefollowing paragraph.4.2. Interview and ObservationThis thesis wants to find out about the individual conditions and needs of the target groupwomen as well as their opinions and attitudes. It is crucial to look at the topic from differentperspectives to get more information about strategies, interactions and perceptions of thepeople. Furthermore, the conduction of different methods to analyse the research topic canincrease the theoretical generalization (Flick 2007: 260). Therefore it was decided to adopt atriangulation of the methods literature review, interview and observation. Triangulationshould help to capture the complexity of social and personal reality as well as support gettinga broader and integrated insight into the people`s living realities, in this case theirunderstanding and handling of participation and empowerment of women (Friebertshäuser1997: 505 in Flick 2008: 57). For data collection in the field the qualitative methods,interview and observation, were chosen.There is a wide-range of qualitative interview techniques. While quantitative methods providethe width, qualitative methods provide the depth. Qualitative methods only allow limited47