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.