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| Women and children gather to collect water from a water source in Mossuril district in Mozambique. Almost half of the country's 26 million population don't have access to safe water. Retrieved October 14, 2019 from https://www.theguardian.com |
Time Flows Away like the Water in the River - Confucius
Exploring the relation between water accessibility and gender inequality
Being raised in the Netherlands, - with safe, clean and drinkable water coming from all the taps in my house, at my schools and at any public bathroom - I often catch myself not being able to realize that water is a finite resource. On the contrary, it is estimated that up to six hundred million people in Africa live in conditions of water scarcity (Clancy, 2019). As identified in the first blog post, women and girls are often responsible for a household's water (UNESCO, 2016) for drinking, cooking, washing, and sanitation needs (Clancy, 2019).
In fact, an Ethiopian case study shows that water collection can often require hours for a single trip to the nearest water source. In rural Oromia, for example, the average collection time is almost 2 hours and in the dry season this raises significantly to 9 hours (Tucker et al., 2014). A case study in Mozambique reports that women in Inhambane province need 6 hours to collect water due to drought, whereas before they would spend 2 hours collecting water (Clancy, 2019).
Since water is a necessity of life, the collection of thereof has opportunity costs: women will be less likely to commit to other activities such as income-generation, farm work, family care and leisure (Tucker et al., 2014). In the dry season, households may be forced to withdraw their children, mostly girls, from school to help collecting water. In rural areas, some women have to find a balance between water collection and the provision of food and water to their husbands on the field. This is related to an increase of domestic violence and verbal abuse (Clancy, 2019; Tucker et al., 2014).
In fact, an Ethiopian case study shows that water collection can often require hours for a single trip to the nearest water source. In rural Oromia, for example, the average collection time is almost 2 hours and in the dry season this raises significantly to 9 hours (Tucker et al., 2014). A case study in Mozambique reports that women in Inhambane province need 6 hours to collect water due to drought, whereas before they would spend 2 hours collecting water (Clancy, 2019).
Since water is a necessity of life, the collection of thereof has opportunity costs: women will be less likely to commit to other activities such as income-generation, farm work, family care and leisure (Tucker et al., 2014). In the dry season, households may be forced to withdraw their children, mostly girls, from school to help collecting water. In rural areas, some women have to find a balance between water collection and the provision of food and water to their husbands on the field. This is related to an increase of domestic violence and verbal abuse (Clancy, 2019; Tucker et al., 2014).
Water accessibility also closely relates to Africa's Water Women's well being; due to climate change, extreme weather events such as prolonged droughts and more intense rainfall will increase (Kreike, 2019). As a consequence of drought, boreholes for water collection need to be drilled deeper, which results in women having to haul water from depths of about 30 meters. Besides, in periods of drought women are more likely to engage in conserving water for their families, for example by reducing their bathing frequencies. In Ghana, for example, tradition and culture can incentive women to prioritize their husband's water needs over their own. It is also important to note that the conditions for water collection in urban and rural areas do not differ much when it comes to women's opportunity costs; interruptions to water supply in urban areas result in long queuing times (Clancy, 2019).
Linking these findings to the United Nation's SDGs, one can argue that achieving SDG 6.1 'By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all', positively influences gender equality (SDG 5); household poverty (SDG 2) and food security (SDG 2); girls' educational attendance (SDG 4); and good health and well-being (SDG 3). In order to achieve SDG 6.1, however, climate action (SDG 13); strong institutions (SDG 16); and collaboration between governments, NGOs and local communities is required (SDG 17). This shows that the relation between water accessibility and gender inequality involves a lot of other sustainability issues, which therefore need to be taken into account in later blog posts. Especially, resilience building and coping mechanisms to drought is a crucial gender differentiated asset to further explore, which determines power relations between African women and men (Mapedza et al., 2019).
Adding all these points up, Africa's Water Women play a crucial role in ensuring their household's sustainability. The well-being of their household depends on their daily commitments in water collection. Therefore it is important to recognize and understand the prediction that the impact of climate change induced variations in weather patterns will have disproportionately greater negative impact on African women than men (Clancy, 2019; Mapedza et al., 2019). And when Africa's Water Women's time flows away due to increased water collection time, so does the water in the river when climate change brings longer periods of drought in many areas of Africa.
Linking these findings to the United Nation's SDGs, one can argue that achieving SDG 6.1 'By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all', positively influences gender equality (SDG 5); household poverty (SDG 2) and food security (SDG 2); girls' educational attendance (SDG 4); and good health and well-being (SDG 3). In order to achieve SDG 6.1, however, climate action (SDG 13); strong institutions (SDG 16); and collaboration between governments, NGOs and local communities is required (SDG 17). This shows that the relation between water accessibility and gender inequality involves a lot of other sustainability issues, which therefore need to be taken into account in later blog posts. Especially, resilience building and coping mechanisms to drought is a crucial gender differentiated asset to further explore, which determines power relations between African women and men (Mapedza et al., 2019).
Adding all these points up, Africa's Water Women play a crucial role in ensuring their household's sustainability. The well-being of their household depends on their daily commitments in water collection. Therefore it is important to recognize and understand the prediction that the impact of climate change induced variations in weather patterns will have disproportionately greater negative impact on African women than men (Clancy, 2019; Mapedza et al., 2019). And when Africa's Water Women's time flows away due to increased water collection time, so does the water in the river when climate change brings longer periods of drought in many areas of Africa.
I am curious: will there be a solution for these issues... ? Looking to reading your next blog.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment, in blog posts 4, 6, 8 & 11 I delve deeper into approaches of gender mainstreaming and the Participatory Action Research method! These could also be seen as solutions for addressing the issues talked about in this blog post.
DeleteThe lost hours/time spent on water collection and the disproportionate impact of water supply failures on women are very important points. The discussion of how climate change may impact wells is simplistic and could be better informed and linked to available literature.
ReplyDeleteThank your for the comments, I agree the example of climate change and the impact of wells is quite simplistic. But during severe drought events groundwater supplies would shrink faster than they can be replenished by rainfall. As a consequence the water table drops, which could result in the drying up of wells. In order to reach the groundwater, the wells then ought to be digged deeper.
DeleteWhen I learned about the droughts in Madagascar as discussed in blog post 9, I looked into a recent article about boreholes in the drought-prone south of Madagascar "Mapping of groundwater potential zones in the drought-prone areas of South Madagascar using geospatial techniques" by Serele et al. (2019). It discusses the importance of reliable groundwater investigation because the drilling of boreholes for water provision is challenged by the salanization of groundwater. I am trying to understand these interlinkages better (without chemistry backgound), since they seem to be quite important side effects of climate change...