Water, Gender and Power

In my last post, I discussed a brief history of development practices, including the emergence of post-colonial development. Today I will talk about different bottom-up and top-down approaches in relation to gender inclusion and equality in water resources in Africa.  Top-Down Approaches Top-down approaches, as seen in my last post, are those where governments, development institutions or NGOs attempt to create policies and programmes that will help provide water resources to communities. However, the main issue here is that they sometimes miss the point. By not talking to the people in the community there is a lack of understanding about who needs the resources what they need them for. Specifically, when it comes to marginalised groups.  Having said this, if governments or development institutions are committed to hel ping those marginalised groups they have the power to do so. For example, governments can change the law in regards to marital property rights, inheritance, lan...

This week, whilst trying to find information for my next blog post, I came across a TEDxTalks called 'Africas Post-Colonial Development' by Fatoumata Waggeh. It struck me how important it is to highlight this background when I am talking about development issues in Africa.  Fatoumata asks the question at the start 'why are resource-rich African countries, like Nigeria, underdeveloped?'. Obviously, this is a very complex question but she highlights that the practices and policies of development institutions, specifically, Bretton Wood institutions have exacerbated the issue. Going back to the post WW2 era when development practice became mainstream, wealthy western institutions set up programmes such as the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) to help countries, like Nigeria, to develop. Although, these programmes forced governments to radically privatise education and health in order to receive their loans. This was in line with neoliberal capitalism ideology permeat...

This week, I will discuss the role of women in water management and their participation in decision-making processes. This blog will focus on women's historically marginalized position from participation as well as the barriers facin g them, and the opportunity for women in positions of power and governance. For numerous reasons, women have typically been detached from decision-making processes in relation to water which reinforces the social inequalities in regards to access to water. Similarly, other marginalized groups such as poor communities, ethnic minorities and the elderly are equally subjected to this inequality.  Due to this, a participatory framework where all stakeholders and citizens are involved in decision making is now part of the contemporary development approach carried out by many development agencies in order to aid the engagement of women in water-related development processes  (Coulter et al ., 2019) . As discussed in previous blog posts, in many sub-Sah...

As World Toilet Day is coming up on the 19th November I thought it was important to talk about the importance of water and sanitation facilities. In my previous blog posts, I have focused around rural communities and their struggles to access water resources, today, I will focus more on urban African communities. As urbanisation has quickly transformed much of the global south, it is now estimated that 1 billion people live in informal settlements globally  (UN Habitat, 2020) . These informal settlements often are characterised by limited water and sanitation facilities although they have vibrant with innovation. In this blog I will discuss the importance of water and sanitation facilities in general but also specifically for women and also the violence women face accessing these facilities looking at a report from Nairobi, Kenya.  Water and Sanitation for Women  Sanitation is often determined inadequate due to the lack of water resources but for a long time, this linkage...

At the end of my last blog post, I wrote about how a gendered approach to water resource issues has been highlighted by various sources. In this blog, I want to closely explore the issue of water collection labour focusing on recent studies produced about Sub-Saharan Africa, then more closely looking at a case study from Senegal and the impacts for women and girls. Water collection labour is disproportionally a female issue that affects their health, livelihoods and education. Communities that have access to private taps from piped systems have increased time for productive water use which benefits their livelihoods and economic status ( Van Houweling, 2012 ).  Source  A recent study which collected data from 24 Sub-Saharan countries estimated that around 14 million women and 3.5 million female children were spending over 30 minutes a day collecting water ( Graham et al., 2016 ). There were also male children reported to collect water, but it was estimated that the split among...

Following my first blog post, I want to dive into the specific issues of water availability in Africa and look at how this links to the gender disparities in water. I will focus on the link of water scarcity and water collection labour, due to that fact that water collection is often the responsibility of women and children (Graham et al., 2016) .  Image of Lake Victoria (Source) In the 21st century, there are many factors contributing to the availability of water resources. Firstly, population growth across the world has meant that the demand for water resources has increased as there are more mouths to feed. The African population has increased by an estimated 50% in the last 20 years, this creates dramatic increases in water demand especially in urban areas. On top of this, this century has seen major climatic changes occur. In Africa, climate change is having disproportionate effects on the availability of water. This means that already inconsistent precipitation events through...