Gender and Waste Nexus: Experiences from Bhutan, Mongolia and Nepal

Bhutan

The Memelakha landfill: a closer look at the above picture reveals that despite the segregation of wet and dry waste at the source (household, or restaurant, or market), they get mixed at the landfill. The red and green bags are medical waste (see detail below with gloves, needles, and bloody compresses) which just gets mixed with the other waste. Photo by Ieva Rucevska.

“Some people want to increase waste because they love to recycle. We don´t like recycling – we call it vicious-cycling. Our main objective is to reduce at the source through advocating behaviour change through local knowledge.” – Nedup Tshering, Clean Bhutan. Clean Bhutan also provides skills training for the unemployed wives of officers from the armed forces and economically disadvantaged rural and urban women. Although these programmes have some merit, making baskets does not offer a long-term solution to the waste problem. Providing access to different skills – whether mathematics, driving or smart farming – may result in better outcomes. The Tarayana Foundation also focuses on women’s empowerment but takes a much more practical and enabling approach. Since women are often not able to leave their farms to attend community meetings or workshops, Tarayana provides its courses to women at their homes on a one-to-one basis to ensure they receive information directly. By talking to women only, Tarayana is able to understand women’s perspectives on an issue where men’s points of view tend to dominate. The foundation concentrates on rural communities and contributes to establishing gender equality and enabling conditions for women. Thanks to Tarayana’s

efforts, women who are often not used to working outside their homes and who may lack self-esteem are able to gain technical skills and the confidence to start their own small-scale operations. Programmes such as these not only play an important role in promoting a bigger role for men in housework and household waste management, but also promote women as good decision makers and train women in social skills to positively increase their presence within their families and communities. The National Environment Commission runs a programme in schools to build civic responsibility related to waste management. In Bhutan, teachers have their students’ respect and schools can therefore play an active role in educating students about recycling, segregation, waste management and waste prevention. Schools also provide an opportunity to break down some gender roles and patterns and to promote the participation of men in household work and the participation of women in leadership..

Policy and governance

Women hold less senior job positions than men in Bhutan and are almost invisible in politics or decision- making positions. This is also the case in Bhutan’s waste

68 Gender and waste nexus