Water, Gender and Development in Africa

“Periods shouldn't come in the way of us achieving our dreams. I don’t think any girl should miss a school day because she is a girl.”  – Melal, 15, Ethiopia  (Water Aid) In this context menstruation is usually positioned in a water, sanitation and hygiene and highlights the interdependence between sanitation, gender equity and education. As , the la te, UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan said,  "there is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls" ( UN, 2006 )  and without adequate toilet facilities, menstruation creates another gender disparity in education access ( Jewitt and Ryley, 2014 ). 'No more hopscotch' , the title of this blog, is one of the first things a young northern Tanzanian women, in an interview in Sommer's 2012 study, said she missed about girlhood and school. One of the main markers for leaving girlhood and entering adulthood is menstruation. There are many social, cultural and physical implications of be...

WASH campaign, ( WaterAid, 2013 )   I ended my last blog by asking ‘ 'Is the solution then a higher provision of toilets?'  Well, yes and no. This question oversimplifies a complex issue especially regarding gender based violence in Nairobi but I want to understand if sanitation-based development interventions can contribute to the reduction of risk in the lives of women and girls.  One large scale study in India, found that compared to using household toilets, open defecation doubles a woman's odds of non-partner sexual violence ; which does indicate that by improving toilet infrastructure has a direct effect on improving the safety of women ( Jadhav, Weitzman & Smith-Greenaway, 2016 ). While it is somewhat impractical to say the solution to all sanitation problems is having household toilets installed for all,  one recent study in Khayelitsha, South Africa , looked directly at the relationship between the costing involve...

“Men face being mugged, women face being raped, when going to the toilet after dark in Kenya’s slums” ( Amnesty International , 2010) According to WHO and UNICEF, 1/3 of women across the world are unable to access safe and adequate toilet amenities ( Gonsalves et. al, 2015 ).  Without planned sewage systems a whole host of issues arise around health and hygiene but recently an increasing number of researchers are pointing to the relationship between sanitation and women's risk of violence.  Walking to distant areas  or using WASH facilities at night puts women and children at risk of sexual harassment  and rape resulting in  sexually transmitted  diseases, pregnancy, "being accused of being unfaithful by husbands, being disowned by families, or mocked by other community members; and mental health challenges such as increased fear and stress " ( WaterAid, 2013 :1). I previously addressed water collection and risk. Water collection c...

I found this brilliantly detailed and comprehensive info-graphic depicting the link between the Sustainable Development Goals and Menstruation. As this is what I had begun to discuss in my last post ' Water is life.  Sanitation is Dignity ', I thought it would be useful to add this in here:  It is from the Menstrual Hygiene Day project website which can be visited by clicking here .  This week on World  Toilet day after a lecture on sanitation I was  drawn to write my  last post on toilets and menstruation.  After looking at the issues are toilets,  I feel  haven't fully covered  gendered  risk and  vulnerability in ' Water and Gendered Vulnerability: Water Collection and Risk '.  I  had intended to revisit the topic so will do so in my next post . Then the week after I will revisit menstrual management and sanitation. Thanks for reading!

HAPPY WORLD TOILET DAY! On today, 19th November, it is World Toilet Day . It is fitting then that in today’s blog post, I am moving onto sanitation issues and what is at the heart of sanitation? Toilets . World Toilet Day  was designated by the UN in 2010 to promote the issue of sanitation and toilets as a humanitarian device for development. It was to help raise the issue while attempting to remove pre-existing stigmas around going to the toilet.The toilet has since become a major object of development, for example, the  Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's competition  to ' reinvent the toilet '. WaSH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) has been firmly molded into the development agenda over the last decade or more. In the  2000-2015 Millennium Development Goals  did not have a separately specified goal for sanitation; it was included as a subset under  Millennium Development Goal 7, 'Ensure environmental sustainability'  - Target 7C: By 2015, h...

Thorpe, 2017 "For us the act of collecting water poses no risk. We go to the tap and fill our glass. But for many in the developing world, particularly women and girls, such a day-to-day chore can be extremely dangerous". -   Jan Eliasson  (former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations).  Water collection is much more than walking to get water and coming back again. In areas with limited water access, issues of privacy and safety are also a major concern. Further to the lost hours and heavy loads discussed in my last blog post, a lack of close and safe water resources, especially in rural Sub-Saraharn Africa, pose a risk to many individuals. In that post I also stated that the average distance traveled for water is  3.7miles/6km and most water collections took over 30 minutes to complete.  Women and children, when fetching water from distant sources, can walk long distances on sometimes dangerous paths, by spending so much time away...

WPS, 2012  WHO FETCHES WATER? Gendered norms and roles in the majority of places where water collection is a must, mean that it is the burden of women and girls to collect water as it is part of the daily household chores. Across 24 countries in Sub Saharan Africa, around 13.54 million women and 3.36 million girls were solely responsible for fetching water for their household where collecting water took over 30 minutes ( Graham et, al, 2016 ).  Geere Hunter & Jagal , in their studies of water collection across 6 different communities in rural South Africa, that the structure of water collection was as follows: 56% - Adult women  31% - Girls  10% - Boys  3% - Adult men  WOMEN'S LIVES ARE EXTREMELY INFLUENCED BY WATER COLLECTION This structure is common across the majority of Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) and women's lives are extremely influenced by water collection. Furthermore, the average time spent getting water in ...

My watercolour painting . Water infiltrates (see what I did there?)  into every aspect of every persons life and as every individual has a gender identity, gender is intrinsic to this discussion.  Gender is an extremely important part of any discussion, particularly in development and water,   however it has not always been treated as such.  Topics surrounding equality and inclusion are currently center stage on the world platform and within policy, with movements like 'Times up' and 'Me Too' women across the global North are calling for equal footing and treatment in everyday life. It is in this political climate that I chose to write this blog on gender as it is important for us to decolonize our knowledge and look at the world not from the default viewpoint (usually from a privileged, Western, white and/or male stance) which provides a single story of places like 'Africa' and doesn't address many issues from the other side of gender. ...

We have to talk about water, – water is life. We have to think about water, – water is life. We have to dream about water, – water is life. We have to sing about water, – water is life. We have to drink water, – water is life. Everline Zesamaja, Voss Foundation Everline Zesamaja and her Swari Primary School in Samburuland, Kenya, 2010 Water is life. Think about the last shower you had? Or the last time you filled your water bottle? Or the last time you washed your hands? How much thought did you put into it? Think about how much of your daily life intersects with water. How much does water mean to you? Although we may not put much thought into the water we use, water use and access shapes the lives of many across the world. Globally, 2.1 billion people around the world do not have fully safe and managed water, meaning they must get water from an outside source, whether its for drinking, washing, cooking or agricultur...