A gap in the literature?

When I started this blog, I had every intention of investigating the relationships between water and gender in African countries, but I didn't necessarily know what this would entail. I expected that there might be a gendered aspect to perceptions and experiences of water-based issues - why else would it be a suggested topic? I even expected that women might be more responsible for the sourcing of domestic water - is the clue in the word domestic? However, I wasn't expecting the extent to which the literature reaffirms and accentuates these presumptions. Although this won't be the last post that I put up, I want to take a quick break from the more informative pieces I've done so far, and just take a minute to reflect on what I've read so far and, importantly, what I haven't.

It appears to be a commonly accepted fact that increased access to safe water is related to higher levels of female empowerment. Increased access to safe water means that women and young girls have to spend less time walking long distances to fetch water from dubious sources, and so can spend more time in education, pursuing employment opportunities, or simply have more time to dedicate to other domestic or community pursuits (Harris et al, 2016). Spending more time in work and education means that females are more able to operate on an equal footing with males, and so existing gender-based designations of societal roles will start to be broken down for the next generation. This positive circle of events might be comforting to believe but it also sounds almost too good to be true. It is very easy to accept this as a hard and fast truth, but I have found very few case studies which explicitly reaffirm this. Rather, there are elements of this truth in many case studies, but not necessarily the whole thing. I don't wish to belittle the role of a reliable water source in contributing to female empowerment in any way, however I do feel that perhaps there should be further investigation, and recognition that cultural complexities that are specific to separate communities also play a large role in female empowerment.

Additionally, perhaps in line with Western positionality, the existing literature makes it very easy to assume that females are the only ones who need to be empowered by improving access to water. There are many words that could describe the ways that we in the West might view cultures of developing regions, or of whole continents such as Africa. Our perspectives might be described as orientalist, colonial or superior, but here, the most appropriate term is 'reductionist'. Issues of water scarcity are reduced to impacting only women and, as far as much of the literature is concerned, has little effect on men. One of the only references I have come across assesses the impact of varying water availability on men is Abrahams et al (2011), which considers the extent to which water and sanitation services are provided to women and men. Whilst in many sources (Chant & McIlwaine, 2013; Mmbengwa et al, 2014) women are considered in their own right, I haven't found nearly as many where male experiences of water provision are considered alone. It almost seems as it efforts to avoid the marginalisation of females within academic discourse have gone so far that the male is being forgotten as the other side of a gendered consideration.

Whilst I don't disagree in any way with the strong focus on the relationship between women and water, and the potential for female empowerment, the best form of development would be one which empowers all marginalised groups of people, not just those of a specific gender or cultural stereotype. In order for this to occur, I feel that there should be a more widely available body of literature with a more inclusive focus on the gendered relationship between males and water, as well as a recognition of the cultural complexities that can add to or take away from the empowering potential of a safe water supply.

A quick look at gendered issues of sanitation...

As I mentioned in my last post, I want to focus a little more on the relationship between gender and sanitation, with a particular focus on the different experiences of men and women in African communities. From the reading that I have done so far to create previous blog posts, there has been one undeniable, inescapable conclusion – women and girls are most likely to bear the brunt of issues arising from inadequate infrastructures for safe water or sanitation provision. Everyone within a community that has poor sanitation provision will experience general, but not insignificant issues, such as increased prevalence of water-borne diseases, and higher mortality rates (Galan et al, 2013). Days that could otherwise be spent working and earning an income will instead be spent trying to recover from the latest bout of diarrhoeal disease, and spending money on medicines. This is likely to be more of an impact that men will experience, as they are generally the more economically productive out of the husband-wife partnership in many African countries (May & Andy, 1997). Everyday, hours that could be spent on education, domestic work or earning a living, are instead spent travelling long distances to find a suitable place to go to the toilet. Men, women and children alike all have to lose this time to the task of relieving themselves, however for women and young girls it can be more arduous and risk-ridden than for men. Vulnerability to attack or harassment, cultural condemnation, and domestic expectations are just three of the perils that women have to juggle on a daily basis when sanitation provision is inadequate.  

People living in extreme poverty can be found in both rural and urban settings, however, contrary to what you might think, issues of inadequate sanitation are often the most prominent in urban slums (Govender et al, 2011). The high population density and lack of urban space mean that its occupants often have to travel further, and for longer to find open spaces to defecate if acceptable sanitation facilities aren't provided. A study by Reddy & Snehalatha (2011) in India found that residents in even the most vulnerable communities made a link between poor sanitation and the presence of disease and disease-carrying vectors, such as mosquitoes. This linkage means that defecating within the streets of the settlements carries with it embarrassment and judgement from other members of the community. To avoid this, people often choose to travel to open spaces as discreetly as they can, or at extremely early or late times of the day when fewest people are around. For women, the least disagreeable option is often to travel in groups at around 4.30 am. This way, they can minimise the risk of attack, or the chance that someone will see them.  

These extreme measures that women have to go to for privacy are even more apparent when they are menstruating. Menstruation is perceived as unclean and dirty, and is often not considered when setting up sanitation facilities within an urban settlement (Abrahams et al, 2011). In India, similar attitudes prevail in urban slum settlements, and here, women use cloths which they change two to three times per day. When these are washed, they are dried only in places where men will not come across them. When the cloths need to be disposed of after a few months, standard practise is to seal them in a bag, and bury them far from the settlements. The few usable toilets in the urban slums of Hyderabad, where the study is set, do not have facilities to dispose of sanitary materials, meaning that women will often choose to clean themselves in an open field, than an actual latrine because they feel it is more private. Although this information is from an Indian context, it is easy to imagine similar conditions within urban slums of Africa, particularly as a study by Abrahams et al found that women do not benefit nearly as much from developmental provision of sanitation as men.  

Female empowerment is an often cited outcome of NGO or government focus on a particular area. However, claiming that female empowerment is a direct result of installing pumps or up to date toilet facilities would be like claiming that an intricate tapestry is made up of just two threads. Female empowerment may face obstacles such as societal attitudes, and much of the population of a traditionally patriarchal community may not know how to accept new female outspokenness. The next post will examine in more detail the ways that the presence, or lack of an adequate water supply can affect female empowerment, beyond simply allowing more time for work or domestic chores.  

World Toilet Day

One week ago, on the 19th November, it was World Toilet Day. Shameful as it might be to admit, I did not know too much about it, apparently having lived under a toilet shaped rock up until this year. I decided to do some research and get in the know.  

The first thing that you see when you click onto the official World Toilet Day website, is this image below, with two Asian women smiling at the camera and the hashtag 'we can't wait' superimposed over them.  

Image sourced from: http://www.worldtoiletday.info/

The fact that it is two adult women used in the headline image of the website speaks volumes about the intrinsic relationship between women and sanitation. Whilst World Toilet Day is not solely about improving female access to adequate sanitation facilities, there is a clear recognition that women stand to lose more than men everyday their sanitary needs aren't accommodated to even half the level that we would expect in the West  (Sommer & Caruso, 2015). World Toilet Day is about bringing awareness and removing taboos around the global sanitation crisis, so that it can become a part of academic and public discourses (World Toilet Day, 2015). According to UN Data, there are still nearly one billion people who have no alternative but to defecate in the open, and a further 1.4 billion without safe and reliable access to proper sanitation. That makes almost 2.4 billion people who experience sub-par sanitation facilities on a daily basis, and the health and safety implications that come with it. Environmental contamination and the spread of waterborne diseases come hand in hand with poor sanitation provision. For example, in Sabon Zongo, a small community in Accra Ghana, many residents can't afford to pay for the few sanitation services provided, and so prefer to package their excrement in plastic bags and dispose of them within the community (Owusu, 2010). This method of disposal, along with choked drainage systems and inadequate refuse collection have resulted in contaminated water systems. Consequently the area has a high prevalence of dysentery and diarrhoea as well as disease spread by mosquitoes which breed in stagnant piles of liquid waste. 

Whilst these health issues are the most recognised issues to arise from inadequate sanitation provision, there are also significant social impacts, particularly for women and girls. Where latrines are provided, they may be located a distance from the household, meaning that people, especially females, can be vulnerable to attack during the night when no one else might be around (Sommer & Caruso, 2015). Inadequate sanitation provision can also impact on female education, particularly for teen girls whilst they are menstruating. Girls often choose to skip school rather than being thought of as unclean when she is unable to hide the fact that she is on her period. The next post will deal in more detail with the relationship between gender and sanitation, and the particular issues faced by women in this. 

World Toilet Day aims to not only bring issues of inadequate sanitation and its impact on development into global spheres of discussion, but to also actively break down sanitation-based barriers to female empowerment particularly. The ideal goal would be for this relatively new national day of toilet awareness to become unnecessary in the future, because adequate sanitation will be accessible all over the world. For the next few years, it should be a faux pas for a geography student to be uninformed about World Toilet Day, but in an ideal future, the only place for World Toilet Day is in the history books. 

UN Case Studies - Harmonising the relationship between water and gender

The UN published a report in 2006 with a multitude of case studies illustrating the successes of various projects  aiming to alleviate issues which had arisen as a result of poor water and sanitation provision in the Global South. A key consideration for these projects, and for this blog post, is the potential for female empowerment through adequate provision of water and sanitation. In my last post, I outlined the ways in which an insufficient access to these basic services has resulted in clearly gendered divisions of labour and an acceptance that schooling is less important for girls than boys. This point will be further illustrated using some of the case studies from the UN report. Whilst the problems faced by women in these communities are very real, I often feel that UN reports can be written so as to exaggerate the successes of their projects beyond what might have actually been achieved. It is important to be aware of this favourable presentation of information, but as this post is focused more on the existence of barriers to female empowerment, it is not such an issue.  

The African case studies found in the UN report were located in South Africa, Togo, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda. Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe were perhaps the most useful in describing issues of a lack of female empowerment, so the post will be centred around these.   

Nigeria 

This case study is set on the top of the Obudu Plateau in south east Nigeria. It is home to Becheve agricultural communities, as well as Fulani pastoralists who, as we found out during the in-class debate, are already on a tight water budget as a result of poor management of the Komadugu-Yobe river basin. Due to the pastoral nature of the Fulani culture, access to sufficient grazing land and various permanent sources of water are crucial to their livelihood. Restricted access to this land and water has been a source of conflict within Fulani community, with the potential for major impacts on food security, economic and social security (Fabusoro, 2009). Within this context, the management of any domestic water is a contentious issue, and comes with great responsibility. 
In line with ideas presented in the previous post, women were acknowledged as the main providers of water, but had very little say in determining the usage of the resource, as traditional Fulani society is patriarchal. Female schooling was often overlooked in favour of sourcing water, and whilst women were not directly abused, they were not considered as having a role or contributing to society beyond domestic chores. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation became involved with implementing a Watershed Management Project which aimed to accommodate various stakeholders on top of the plateau, and to distribute water resources equitably. Female empowerment was strongly promoted as this new management committee was created, and resulted in progress towards gender equality.  

Women were involved in the construction and maintenance of a reservoir on top of the plateau, which, once completed, was a consistent source of safe water meaning that the time spent by women collecting water was significantly reduced. For young girls, this meant that they had more time for school, and were able to interact on an equal footing with boys their own age. As women had more time to spend on income generating activities, they were more acknowledged by men as being necessary to the functioning of society, and even gained positions of status within the Fulani community and water management structures.  

It is unclear what direction Fulani society might move in if its water supply were to be compromised once again – whether it would continue to recognise the need for female empowerment, or whether it would revert to extreme patriarchy. Ten years on from when this report was published, it would be interesting to know whether female empowerment is in a less tenuous position, supported only by a safe and accessible water supply.  

Ghana 

The Samari-Nkwanta community is located in the centre of Ghana, approximately 370km from Accra. It has a population under seven hundred people, most of whom are dependent on farming for their livelihood. Agriculture is a significant use of water within this community, so when the regular water sources would dry up during the dry season, it was vital that the community still have access to a measure of water. Women and girls were responsible for collecting from dangerous and remote sources, working an average of 19 hour days compared to the 12 hour workday of the men of the community. This seven hour difference is perhaps the most obvious expression of water-based gender inequality within this community, but there were also cultural blockades – the Muslim male dominance was considered a main reason for why women did not seek a more involved role within water management. The Ghana Water Rural Project encouraged the implementation of a community-oriented project which supplied the village with two boreholes with handpumps, as well as two public latrines and a urinal, all of which came with the condition that equal numbers of men and women be included on the management committee. Although this could be considered as interfering in the cultural practises of a society, it has resulted in a more equitable share of power within the community, so that there is less of a gendered division of labour and the length of workdays.  

Zimbabwe 

A gender mainstreaming approach was taken in Manzvire Village, in the Chipinge District of Zimbabwe. Gender mainstreaming is a strategy in which every project is oriented around improving and promoting gender equality (Manase et al, 2003). In this case, the Chipinge Rural District Council (RDC) used a contribution of almost $4000 USD from UNICEF to update and refurbish previously decrepit boreholes and water supply systems to the community. The project recognised that women, who had again been the main sourcers of water far outside the community, were losing time and education or employment opportunities to the search for adequate domestic water. It was therefore specifically aimed at increasing female authority in water management decisions, including selecting the new water access points. The UN report states the successes of this project as; lower water network maintenance costs as women are volunteers, women feel that they are equally respected agents as men, and women have more time for other domestic or economically productive activities.  

However, Manase et al highlight some possible failings of the project, and others which were carried out in Zimbabwe at a similar time. On a national scale, although women were empowered on a ministerial scale, this did not trickle down to the actual implementation of water management and gender policies on an institutional level. This is not to say that the RDC's work in Manzvire Village was not successful in empowering women, only that this success was not as widespread or as simple as the report makes out.  

In all countries, it is important to recognise the complexities in the relationship between people and water as a whole, as well as between gender and water more specifically. The UN report implies that issues of lacking female empowerment are easily solved, and that there is almost a formula that can be followed. It does not portray difficulties or ethical issues that might be encountered when having to overcome cultural norms, such as in the case of the Fulani, to make the society more facilitating of women's rights.  

References 

Fabusoro E (2009) Use of collective action for land accessibility among settled Fulani agro-pastoralists in southwest Nigeria, Sustainability Science, 4, 2, 199-213. 

Manase G, Ndamba J, Makoni F. (2003) Mainstreaming gender in integrated water resources management: the case of Zimbabwe, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, 28, 967-971.  

UN (2006)  Gender, Water and Sanitation. Case Studies on Best Practises. Advance version. [online] Available at http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/sdissues/water/casestudies_bestpractices.pdf . Accessed: 15.11.2016

Domestic water collection as a barrier to female empowerment...

Access to safe water is a key indicator of development and the well-being of a country's population (Tchouassi, 2012). The UN Millennium Development Goal to halve the proportion of  the world's population without safe drinking water reportedly resulted in 2.6 billion people gaining access to improved water sources between 1990 and 2015 (UN, 2016). However, this might be rather an optimistic representation of the success of this goal. Efforts to ensure a safe water supply in African countries only really considered drinking water, and little time was devoted to ensuring that communities also had access to enough safe water for bathing, washing and other domestic uses (Chant & McIlwaine, 2013). This meant that although a water supply close to a community might have been improved, it was not enough to sustain the needs of the population it was meant to be supporting. If this is the case, then it can be argued that despite the relative success in extending the reach of safe water around the world, this particular MDG has not been wholly successful in improving the level of development and well-being of African populations. 

African women and girls in particular are generally the main collectors of domestic water in both rural and urban regions. It is this gendered role which is one of the most influential barriers to female empowerment (Chant & McIlwaine, 2013). As women have to spend large portions of their day sourcing water, often from multiple locations, for their household needs, this takes away valuable time from schooling or employment opportunities, or even away from times when they would otherwise be performing other gendered domestic chores. Domestic work is commonly synonymous with a female's work, and often has a lower value placed upon it due to its lack of economic value. In the study which I referred to in the previous post, by Harris et al, males in Accra and Ghana often underestimated the magnitude of work and time set aside for these female tasks, and often consider them to be much less complicated than they actually are. Therefore, if a woman is unable to complete the tasks that are expected of her because she is out searching for usable water,  then, beyond a lack of empowerment, she might also be more likely to suffer domestic abuse, as she is seen to be failing or neglecting the most basic tasks. That is perhaps a worst case scenario – in a more optimistic case, she might only be under-appreciated, or judged by her wider community.  

The future in urban regions is likely to be demographically dominated by females (Chant & McIlwaine, 2013), which could either be a great opportunity for female empowerment, or something significantly more disappointing. At present, with female education taking a backseat in favour of collecting water for the household or helping out at home, it looks more like it could be the latter. Without a similar level of education to their male counterparts, it is likely that in the future, although there may be more women in the workforce, they will take the role of labourers and unskilled workers, whilst males who might have a better education will fit into the roles of managers and more knowledge-intensive jobs which can allow for a higher level of empowerment. In this case, the greater numbers of female workers will only complement the hierarchical nature of many industries. 

If access to safe water for all domestic purposes were to be improved, then female empowerment might become a tangible possibility in the near future, as women and girls would have more time to devote to education or employment opportunities, which could contribute to an equal level of proficiency between men and women.  

This post has focused on the idea that a lack of access to enough safe water means that women and girls' time for pursuits such as education and employment is compromised, and therefore the well-being of half of the African population is put at risk in the future, impeding its development in the present. The next post will focus on supporting this idea with case study examples from various African countries.  

List of References  

Chant S. & Mcilwaine C. (2013) Gender, Urban Development and the Politics of Space, [online] Available at: http://www.e-ir.info/2013/06/04/gender-urban-development-and-the-politics-of-space/ [accessed: 27.10.16] 

Harris L, Klieber D, Goldin J, Darkwah A & Morinville C. (2016) 'Intersections of gender and water: comparative approaches to everyday gendered negotiations of water access in underserved areas pf Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa' Journal of gender studies. 1-22. 

Tchouassi G. (2012) 'Does Gender Equality work for Sustainable Development in Central Africa Countries?', European Journal of Sustainable Development, 1 (3), 383-398 

UN (2016) Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability. [online]. Available at: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/environ.shtml [Accessed: 30.10.16].