When we started designing Maji Maisha’s governance structure, we made one decision early and then refused to relitigate it: half the seats on the community water board would be reserved for women’s representatives, with voting rights, on the original constitution.
Three years on, that one decision is the single highest-leverage thing we did on the project. It is also the decision that made some of our partners most uncomfortable, and the one we are now most certain was correct.
Why we did it
Women in this part of Kenya carry the water. They are the ones whose mornings are organised around the borehole’s schedule, whose girls miss school when the queue is long, whose households absorb the disease burden when the supply fails. Designing a governance structure for the water system without women in voting positions is, in a real sense, an information-engineering failure: it routes operational knowledge away from the people who hold it.
We didn’t frame the quota as equity. We framed it as competence.
Why people pushed back
Some of the pushback was predictable: cultural arguments about traditional decision-making, slippery-slope concerns from male elders. We engaged those seriously and at length, and held the line.
Some of the pushback was less predictable. A handful of donors had legitimate questions about whether a quota would create a "tokenism" pattern in which the women on the board didn’t actually exercise influence. That was a fair concern; we addressed it by making the seats voting seats and by structuring the meeting agenda so that operational decisions (which the women on the board are uniquely positioned on) come first, not at the end of the agenda after everyone is tired.
What it actually changed
Within the first year, the difference was operational. The board knew, in real time, when pumps had stalled — because the people in the queue told the people on the board, and the chain was now one degree of separation rather than three. Issue detection went from "next monthly meeting" to "same afternoon".
By year two, the difference was strategic. The board pushed for fee structures that protected the lowest-income households across drought seasons. The donor would not have asked for this; the men on the board, on their own, would not have prioritised it. The combination did.
By year three, the difference was reputational. Two neighbouring communities approached us asking to use the same governance template. The thing that travels is not the solar panels — it’s the constitution.
The smaller, harder lesson
If governance is the leverage point on community-owned infrastructure (and it almost always is), then who sits on the governing body is not a side conversation. It’s the project. We’re not in the borehole-drilling business. We’re in the constitution-writing business with hardware attached.
That reframe changes what we ask for in scoping calls, what we cost in proposals, and what we measure at handover. It also changes who we hire onto the project team — because writing a community constitution is a different competence from sizing a pump.
We should have known that earlier. We do now.