Final thoughts: If development is not engendered, it is endangered

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(UNEP, 2018)

Hi all, so this will be my last blogpost! Throughout this blog I have focused on a few key areas relating to gender water collection, toilets, menstrual management. I have also tried to show how the water and development paradigm links with broader social issues such as risks or attacks and sexual assaults. I feel it is important to note that while gendered harassment and attack are not explicitly sanitation issues, problems around Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WaSH) exacerbate existing vulnerably.

I began this blog with the intent to focus upon a broad range of gendered topics. As I delved in during the first few weeks of term, I became interested in issues of water and sanitation problems that are generally understudied but that I felt are important to highlight within the development paradigm.

Here are a few conclusions from my writings:

  • Although women and men both need adequate access to sanitation, the provision of sustainable water supplies is in itself empowering for women in many ways. This is due to a range of socio-cultural and bio-physical realities that influence and separate women’s experiences in relation to water. 
  • Economic, social and cultural realities can limit women’s abilities to advocate and address these sanitation realities (Smitt, 2018)
  • In relation to water, I believe that while stigmas around going to the toilet and menstruation are being debunked, they still play quite a large role in sanitation problems and broader issues around WaSH. Debunking stigma is especially important as a way to open up conversations and highlight women’s issues. Countries and regions, policymakers and water managers require more evidence which is why cultures of silence around issues like menstruation and situations around gender-based violence need to be addressed.
 ‘If development is not engendered, it is endangered’ - (UNDP, 2016)

With threats like climate change set to exacerbate (see my blog on gender and climate) gender disparities further and decrease the likelihood of meeting the ambitious UN Sustainable Development Goals, especially in Africa, women as the primary users and managers of water present an opportunity and an ‘untapped resource’ for tackling climate related water scarcity (IUCN, 2019).
Despite the fact there are a myriad of social, cultural and economic barriers to involving women in development "the active participation of women increases understanding of community water and sanitation issues and enhances solutions to help end the global water crisis" and mitigate future insecurity (Allen, Morazan & Witt, 2018:632).




(SWA, 2017)
(Women Deliver, 2015)


See my drawing below for a few of my conclusions in info-graphic form!


Thanks for reading!

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