The experiences of ILO-assisted programmes in Africa and Asia point out that infrastructure programmes have a great potential for helping poor women. Poor households tend to have the highest and longest participation in public works, and construction workers from poor households tend to be women. Households with high child dependency ratio, high share of female adults and headed by women tend to have the highest participation.

Infrastructure programmes are not gender-neutral. The ILO’s experiences in the field have demonstrated that the following aspects of programmes can hamper or facilitate women’s participation: level and mode of payment, extent and manner of mobilizing self-help (unpaid) labour, local labour recruitment system, conditions of work at the work site, and degree of poor women's involvement in decision­ making and planning mechanisms.

A review of selected ILO-assisted employment-intensive infrastructure programmes in the field shows that women workers have been concentrated in a limited range of operations, namely, infrastructure tree plantation, tree nurseries and headloading of sand, gravel, rocks and water. While women's direct employment benefits should be maximized through these jobs, women's entry into new operations should also be encouraged. Some ILO programmes have demonstrated how the range of women's jobs in infrastructure programmes can be widened.

In Burkina Faso awareness sessions directed to both women and programme implementers, as well as training sessions for women, enabled them to make cement blocks, a job traditionally reserved for men. Women were also directed to use wheelbarrows in lieu of headloading.

In North Kordofan Province of Sudan where construction work is considered to be a man's job, women eventually participated in the construction of schools and hafir (rainwater catchment basins). It entailed a gradual process of consultation with village leaders, local technicians and poor women themselves, and actual demonstration of those jobs that women could do, beginning in one village and in one infrastructure scheme and then moving on to others.

A district roads construction programme in Botswana encouraged women to enroll in training courses for supervisory and technical positions, and hired them for posts of gang leaders, senior gang leaders, technical officers and assistants.

Source: Reader’s Kit on Gender, Poverty and Employment, MODULE 6. Expanding Wage Employment(Geneva, ILO, 2000)