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.