What about water at home?

While Zwarteveen (1997) specifically examined gender in the context of irrigation, approaches to water management indeed require a distinction between gender inequities in the domestic water sector vs. the productive water sector (Schreiner and van Koppen, 2001). Further, while water management is “a process that aims for the sustainable use, management and development of water, land and related resources”, it is also a process through which gender equity can be fostered as part of the wider objective of achieving social and environmental sustainability (CAP-NET and GPA, 2006: 2; Schreiner and van Koppen, 2001).

In terms of the domestic sector, the burden of providing the family with water often falls on the females in the household (Schreiner andvan Koppen, 2001). Of course, it is important when advocating for relieving women of the burden of this task not to deny the male contributions to the household. As such, it is important to recognise that there are two key challenges in domestic water supply management: firstly, making the collection of water less resource-consuming, but secondly sharing the role of water collection more equally among men and women in the household (Schreiner and vanKoppen, 2001). This fits into the wider objective of not only ensuring safe water access for all family members, but working towards a more gender equitable society too.

Recognising women as water users outside the home

Gender inequality in terms of water access can be defined at a number of levels in Africa: the water supply sector, sanitation, agricultural use and environmental transformation (CAP-NET and GWA, 2006). This blog post will give some insight into the issue in the context of agriculture and irrigation following Zwarteveen’s (1997) paper.

One issue which Zwarteveen (1997) highlights, and is something that will come to influence my own analysis of the issue, is the perspective from which gender inequality in water access is analysed. From an agricultural perspective, water rights are crucial to irrigation as a way of introducing water into the market, hindered by institutional and technical deficiencies. However, a gendered approach would argue that water rights not only hold potential for agricultural development, but also social development in the form of female empowerment.

Ultimately, water rights inequality reflect existing social relations in a community or society. There is a misconception that different uses of water in society are dictated by the different roles of men and women, for example, men working in the field and women in the domestic sphere. However, on the contrary, gender difference in water use actually originates in the unequal water rights in the first place, rather than the different roles embodied by men and women in a culture. Hence, in the context of irrigation, the biggest hindrance to equal access to water “is the astounding lack of recognition of women as irrigators and water users” (Zwarteveen, 1997: 1346).

Defining Gender

In order to discuss the importance of gender to safe water access, it seems necessary to begin by deconstructing the basic meaning of ‘gender’ in the context of water and development in Africa.  

Gregory et al. (2009) refer to gender as “a categorical distinction between men and women”, not because of the biological difference but the different characteristics associated with a person’s sex. This encompasses a broad range of social phenomena, from behaviour, to identity, rights and responsibilities. Of course, gender plays a hugely varying role in different societies; gender relations refer in part to the way in which power relations impact men and women differently, and how these are reinforced by institutions across society (UNDP, 2006). Unfortunately, many societies across Africa are built on unequal gender relations, hence a gendered approach to developmental issues can be justified.

From my initial reading, it seems to me that the issue of gender in sustainable water access is not that women are not involved in the process – in fact they are often highly involved, for example devoting much time and energy to collecting water from pumps – but that men and women can have entirely different roles in water access and management (CAP-NET and GWA, 2006). One such comparison could be formal water access by male farmers in irrigation systems vs. informal access of water by women for domestic consumption. These divergent roles, and efforts to improve the gender equality of water rights and access, are issues that I intend to explore further.