Women and Water: the Gender Discrepancy in Africa

As discussed in my previous posts, the traditional nature in which some women are expected to travel long distances to collect water subjects them to the threat of sexual harassment. 80% of households where water collection is not within close proximity to the home is carried out by women and girls ( Kayser et al. 2019 ). Furthermore, these women are threatened by sexual harassment when they are forced to openly defecate due to a lack of sanitation provisioning. This threat is heightened by cultural norms that deem it inappropriate for women to openly defecate in the presence of people or at the risk of being seen. Hence, they are obliged to do so when it is dark which is a more unpredictable and unsafe period to be alone as a woman. In this post I am going to specifically look at cases of sexual harassment arising during water collection alongside sexual harassment that occurs as a result of a lack of basic sanitation facilities. Whilst there is a variety of definitions a...

Jumping back into my focus on women and the struggle of time poverty, this particular post is going to give a case study example where efforts have been made to reduce the mental and physical effort that women go through during water collection. As I mentioned previously, the responsibility that women have come to own for freshwater is a  cultural mindset that has been deeply embedded in some African societal norms. Whilst there is still the prevalence of water scarcity and gender discrimination within the continent, some countries are introducing programs to alleviate female hardship with relation to water. This is often presented through the work of International NGOs who see it as their responsibility to aid less economically developed nations. However, this charitable act has been debated as a form of Western imposition to reverse the lack of ‘development’, which itself is a contested term. For example, the common interpretation of the movement and migration of ind...

A slight divergence from the initial structure of this blog, but I came across this recently published article by the World Health Organisation (WHO) discussing the impact of climate change on African countries ( WHO, 2019 ). Whilst my focus is primarily on gender and water causing inequality, I think it is important to consider other water issues that appear in current affairs. Any freshwater supply conflict, such as the controversial Nile Renaissance Dam debate occurring now, that is appearing in the news can have direct and indirect impacts on women. So, whilst this particular post does not follow the structure I had mentioned in my introduction, I still believe it is important to consider the impacts of climate change on water and hence indirectly on women. A school girl collecting water from a drying puddle in Nongoma, South Africa. Source Climate change has heightened the unpredictability of water supply through increased periods of drought on one end of t...