On 22 November 2023, the Build4People got represented during a conference about the topic of “gender-sensitive building in development cooperation” at the seat of the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in Berlin.
Our presentation with the title “a gender-equitable building in Cambodia: Experiences from the Build4People project” had been jointly prepared by the Build4People consortium leader Dr. Michael Waibel (Hamburg University), Dr. Anke Blöbaum (Magdeburg University), leader of the Build4People Work Package “Behaviour Change”, and by Christina Karagianni (Technical School of Applied Sciences, Lübeck), research associate of the Build4People Work Package “Sustainable Building”.
Due to the sick leave of Michael, Christina jumped in and presented our findings to a large audience with representatives from municipal governments, civil society networks, academia, and from select donor organisations.
Among others, we explained that our transformative events have already empowered women in Cambodian’s construction sector to organise their own community (W.A.E.) and that the Build4People team will actively support this, in the future.
Moreover, we presented arguments from our survey pointing towards the direction of a design that allows more flexibility in the use of rooms in order to include Cambodian women’s needs more systematically and explicitly in the planning, something that Mrs. Eva Kail , an expert for gender-equitable building and planning from the city of Wien, also presented during her keynote speech.
From a scientific viewpoint, we pointed out the need of research on gender-related behaviour constraints instead of a simple dichotomous view on gender-differences.
Concluding, we have to say that the gender analysis in the context of presentation preparation raised our gender-based awareness, particularly in the context of upcoming project activities and that our team is very open to receive proposals to foster gender mainstreaming in Cambodia’s construction sector, e.g. in regard of B4P implementation phase (2025-2027).
Last but not least, the Build4People team would like to particularly thank Ms. Esther Moltie from the Policy Advice Sector Programme „Cities“ of the “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit“ (GIZ). Esther invited us to become part of this exciting event and who was always very helpful, professional and swift in her communication with us.
