Water, Gender and Development in Africa

Last week was World Toilet Day, which aims to draw attention to the 2 billion people who still lack access to basic sanitation . The purpose of this post is to explore how the persistent lack of adequate sanitation disproportionately affects the health and productivity of women and girls. Toilets are a basic human right, as outlined by SDG Goal 6: ‘water and sanitation for all’, yet the lack of access to toilets has direct consequences on health, drinking-water sources, and the spread of water-borne diseases.  World Toilet Day is an effort to address the sanitation crisis.    I am focusing on Mathare, a rapidly growing urban settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. The situation is most acute in Mathare, where 300,000 residents only have access to 144 shared and publicly available toilets (Figure 1). That is one toilet shared between approximately 2000 people.       Figure 1: Map of toilets in Mathare, Nairobi.   Why do so many people lack access to adequate ...

Today, I will highlight the unjust role of women as primary water collectors and how this accentuates gender inequality. I am using multiple case studies across Zimbabwe, including Manyanhaire et al. (2009) case study of Mundenda village, to analyse the discriminatory nature of water collection, which disproportionately falls on the shoulders of women; a staggering 83% of women are primary water collectors in rural Zimbabwe . Time Poverty   In Mundenda, distances to collect water range from 500 metres to 5 kilometres, with two or three trips taken daily , each trip lasting 30 minutes on average. This situation is not improved in urban areas either, since Remigios (2011) investigated water collection in Kadoma's high-density suburbs and found that women would have to wake up as early as 3 a.m. to join queues at boreholes, as water is vital for cooking, cleaning, bathing, and drinking. Women are essentially obligated to undertake this responsibility. Water is a crucial resource for...

COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, is now underway. This provides a perfect opportunity to explore the fundamental concerns surrounding gender and climate change.  According to the IPCC , "Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and climate variability". For example, alpine glaciers in the Rwenzori mountains of East Africa are highly sensitive to changes in temperature. A study by Taylor et al. (2006) found that rising air temperatures of ~0.5 degrees Celsius over the last four decades contributed to a rapid glacier recession rate of ~0.7km2 per decade. As this warming continues, a shift towards fewer but heavier precipitation events is expected , leading to more frequent and intense floods and prolonged droughts, thus contributing to water and food insecurity.  Why does gender matter in this discourse?    Women "in the global South are particularly vulnerable to climate-related hazards, and resource scarcity" , as a re...