Water and Gender in Africa

Today is World Toilet Day, declared by the United Nations (UN) on the 19 th  November every year to raise awareness for SDG goal 6 to achieve global sanitation for all by 2030. The UN report released a figure drawing a comparison between the ownership of mobile phones that accounts for 6 out of 7 billion people world-wide compared to 4.5 billion people with access to toilets  (Eliasson, 2013) , which prompted the launch of this campaign  (Worstall, 2013) . This gives an insight into the perceptions of sanitation in modernity that is limited to focus on increasing the distribution of the toilet as a tangible object. However, as highlighted from the previous post, the need to break cultural barriers which overlaps with the need to create an inclusive environment for women in sanitation projects are significant barriers in ensuring equal gender sanitation. In ensuring the incorporation of equal gender perspectives in the centre of water and sanitation strat...

The previous posts mentioned the barriers that women faced when it comes to water access and one of them is health. For women an important use of water is for menstrual health, however in Africa, “Period Poverty” ie. when women lacks access to menstrual products and hygiene and water facilities to treat their menstruation is a widespread issue ( Tull, 2019 ). Before heading straight into this topic, I am going to share a story I came across which recounts Mary, a 18 year old girl’s experience dealing with menstruation in Kangundo, Kenya.    “[Mary’s home has] an outdoor bathroom and toilet. Since they do not have running water, they use basin water and soap to take a bath. During her periods, she experiences a lot of pain in her lower back and abdomen, and she is not able to work. The boys in her area do not know much about menstruation, and although Mary has a boyfriend, he lives in Nairobi and they do not discuss menstruation.” ( FSG, 2016 ) Mary’s story highlight...

I recently came across a report highlighting that in many developing countries, it is the case that the proportion of women involved in water collection is close to being equal to men in both rural and urban areas (Geere, 2017) as shown in figure 1. Interestingly however, this trend is less significant in Sub-Saharan Africa (with the exception of Mombosa and Kenya) where in both rural and urban areas, women proportionately are the main bearers of water. With this finding, I came across an interesting case study in Ghana, which will provide an insight into the influence of cultural norms tied in with women in African societies and the influence of socio-economic status affecting the roles of women in water collection in both rural and urban areas. Figure 1: Responsibilities of water collection in rural and urban areas  In Kumasi city, the 2 nd largest metropolitan areas in Ghana, there is an increasing need for water to meet the needs for in...