Women and Water: the Gender Discrepancy in Africa

After having explained my interest in the issue of women and water in Africa, and now that I have briefly contextualised the physical difficulty of water provision in my last two posts, I can now begin to draw attention to gender. The first aspect that I want to elaborate and explore is the widening of the gender equality gap through time poverty. As I discussed in my first post, time poverty refers to the ‘unavailability of time for productive work’ ( Jan and Pervez 2015: 64 ). This refers to the difficulty for women to get involved in other activity, such as education or more formal employment, due to their time being prioritised to water collection. Whilst gender equality has become a focal point for countries, specifically those deemed as ‘developed’ although again, the definition of development is ambiguous, some countries are still yet to reverse their patriarchal stance. Some women in many African countries, such as Ethiopia, are still marginalised despite emerging ...

Following my introduction, this second post will shed some light on the ways in which Africa suffers from water insecurity. After reading an article on the provision of safe water by Golooba-Mutebi, I will tap into the case study of Uganda to highlight some difficulties on water extraction and further the difficulties of resolving rural provision ( Golooba-Mutebi, 2012 ). The inaccessibility of water in rural Africa accentuates the gender discrepancy and is only becoming more threatening with climate change. It is important to be aware of why water in Africa is termed as water scarce to allow for future projects to adapt in the changing climatic landscape, and to find suitable ways to provide safe water to rural and urban communities. Furthermore, the difficulty of water extraction in Africa leads to women and young children, the primary water collectors, having to travel long distances to find a source of safe water which results in a high expenditure of energy and time (...

For my first post in my blog ‘Women and Water: the Gender Discrepancy in Africa’, I am going to outline the motivations behind my decision to discuss this topic and give an introduction into the gendered-issue of water in Africa. I will also indicate the main threats to equality that arise from women’s relationship with water. My desire to write about how water in Africa widens the gender discrepancy that continues its existence, and is described as an ‘uphill battle against patriarchy’ ( Nzomo, 1994: 17 ), came from spending time in Kenya this summer. I was working on my dissertation project in Lake Naivasha and spent time speaking to women about the shift in their social and economic status since becoming employed and financially empowered. One of the things we discussed was how different their lives became after transitioning from a rural area to a town for employment. This included their contrasting roles and opportunities. It was emphasised that women and young gi...