Measuring gender differences in access to water

So if we are to advocate for a greater role of women in water access and management, it only follows that an indicator is required to measure river basins where the need for change is greatest and the impact of any policy change. van Koppen builds a Gender and Water Index starting from the Water Poverty Index, which incorporates gender issues both explicitly and implicitly. However, van Koppen notes that while gender and poverty are highly related, they are fundamentally “different social phenomena”.

van Koppen’s measure would score a river basin well on the basis of performance of three main areas:

1. Equal access and benefit to domestic water
2. Equal costs for domestic water use
3. Equal participation in water management and decision-making

However, while this framework may be useful for the reasons mentioned above, there are some key points to note. Firstly, van Koppen’s model only incorporates water access in the domestic sphere; productive uses of water are extremely important for gender equality and so too must be considered. Secondly, water management is just one of many factors that can contribute to achieving gender equality in a society, hence, achieving equality requires greater change in society than just that of water governance.

Challenging attitudes - a case study

Changing attitudes is a fundamental component of changing the status quo in any context. In this case, this means changing attitudes about the roles that both men and women have in providing water supplies in Africa, and as such this does not just refer to the roles of water collection, but wider decision-making and allocation of resources within the household.

Following this week’s lecture on community-based water resource management, it seemed logical to explore an example of this with a gendered perspective.

I found an example of water management in Manzire Village, Zimbabwe, which since 2003 has received funding from UNICEF for gender-focused rehabilitation of water management. This example portrays how initial male resistance to women being trained in water management was overcome when it became clear that women were potential agents of change and improvement in their own water supplies. With skill specific training focused on women, men started to ensure that jobs traditionally left to women (such as caring for children) were covered when women were undergoing training.

However, despite the short-term help from the males in the household, problems remained with women enduring increased workloads: maintaining the village water supply was undertaken in addition to traditional domestic tasks. This was solved by input from UNICEF and the Rural District Council, which actively encouraged men to get involved with domestic chores and take on some water management responsibilities.  

This example of gender mainstreaming highlights the importance of recognising and adjusting both men and women’s roles in society when bringing about change – attitudes of both genders needs to be challenged. The Manzire Village case study provides an example where UNICEF, local government and individuals interacted to bring about gender mainstreaming in water management. However, it is important to note that this has not entirely solved water issues in the area: poverty remains a key hindrance to further improving water supplies. As a result, gender mainstreaming ought to be considered as one of many strategies to improving water access; alone it achieves very little, but alongside other development efforts it can contribute greatly to better access and a more equitable society.

Mobilising resources

While female empowerment has the potential to offer new ideas and perspectives to water management, a lack of financial resources is often a key limitation on achieving change (UN, 2006). Though funding for such projects is offered by external financial actors, such as charity donors, these are insufficient to solve the entirety of the water issues in Africa. This means that there is a reliance on public funds, for example raised through taxation, borrowing and cross subsidisation, to support water and sanitation needs. As such, governments remain central to water management.

A particularly interesting example here is the Mabule Sanitation Project in South Africa (Poku Sam, 2006). This project, funded by the Mvula Trust, is led by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) of South Africa, with focus on community engagement. In order to stimulate female participation, the DWAF offers extra funding to communities where there is improved gender equality in decision-making. In the Mabule village, this manifested in a brick-making programme, in which the majority of employees were female, the produce of which was used to build toilets. As a result, not only did the village experience improved sanitation from the latrines, but there was also an increasing acceptance of women in leadership rolesx, as well as better collaboration between men and women in the working environment.

Women at the top: female-managed water projects

While some of the literature examined in this blog dates back across the last 20 years, this article provides a current example of an integrated water management project: the designation of two or three dams to be built in South Africa by solely women-owned companies. Of course, because the project has only just begun, we are unable to evaluate its sustainability. However, what is clear from this article is that women’s role in water access is being recognised on political agendas.

Yet one must ask the question, is this approach to water management projects the answer? Surely we should aspire to integrate men and women in water management at all levels, not just company ownership, as is the natural future path for sustainable water management in Africa. As such, perhaps this is more a project to prove a point and change attitudes about the role of women in water management, rather than fundamentally shaking up the male dominated water sector.

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.