Water, Gender and Power

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...

Interactions between social systems and ecosystems, or people and the environment, can be referred to as Human Ecology. This relationship linking human behaviour and the natural world is often critiqued through development challenges. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) presents many of these development challenges and aims to create solutions. SDG 6 states a universal and equitable access to safe water and sanitation, and SDG 5 states gender equality. Linking these together to create a gendered perspective of resource and sanitation issues has been recognised to be critical for gender equality  (UN Water, 2020) . The relationship between water and gender is one of many complexities. Water related issues such as hygiene, water collection, agriculture, and household food security affect men and women in varying ways. For this reason, this blog aims to unpack water and gender discourses in the context of Africa over the course of the next few months. When writing about Afri...