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The End to This Blog, but Not to Fighting Gender Inequality

Unfortunately, we have come to the end of my blog now! Over the past few weeks, I have looked at a range of different issues which disproportionately affect women including: the unequal access to groundwater, the burden of water collection, gender-based violence, period poverty, inequalities in irrigation, participation in water management and climate change. After exploring these issues in my blog, it has become clear that there is still work to be done to fight gender inequality in relation to water. If gender inequality in relation to water is to be dismantled in Africa, then socio-cultural norms and taboos need to be broken down so that women can have equal opportunities to men. Although improving infrastructures and technologies will help women to an extent, wider societal inequalities between men and women need to be addressed first. In order for this to happen, both men and women should be educated on the issues perpetuated by socio-cultural norms, as well as the benefits that
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Recent posts

Climate Change and Its Gendered Implications

For my last blog post, I want to look at an issue which we can already see the impacts of across Africa, that is the gendered implications of climate change and its link to water. Africa is now one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and variability ( Boko et al, 2007 ). The 5th IPCC report estimates that surface temperatures have already increased by 0.5°C in the last century across most parts of Africa and that temperatures are likely to rise by another 2 °C by the end of the century  ( Niang et al, 2014 ). Whilst there are uncertainties in climate change predictions and models, the IPCC has estimated with high confidence that water stress will increase in Africa as a result of climate change and driven by other factors such as land use change and water withdrawals  ( Niang et al, 2014 ). As it has been posed that the impacts of climate change will disproportionately be felt by women, I wanted to explore this in more detail ( UNDP, 2012 ). The Exacerbation of Existin
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Gender Inequalities in Irrigation

In today's post, I want to discuss the inequalities faced by women in terms of their agricultural water needs.  Despite the fact that women make up half of Sub-Saharan Africa's agricultural workforce, their agricultural productivity is 20-30% lower than that of men ( FAO, 2018 ); in turn, an agricultural productivity gap has been created between women and men. This post will explore how women across SSA have less access to irrigated agriculture than men due to mismatches in irrigation technologies and land restrictions.  The Mismatch of Irrigation Technologies Many development programmes and people have assumed certain irrigation technologies are most suitable for women across SSA. For example, the suggestion of drip irrigation as an 'appropriate' technology to expand production for women ( Upadhyay, 2003 ;  Upadhyay and Bhamoriya, 2004 ). However, I argue that this approach to finding universal irrigation technologies for women does not work; as women's preferences
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Women's Participation in Water Management

In today's short post, I want to talk about how the meaningful participation of women in water management has been posed as an approach towards reaching gender equality in relation to water. If the needs of women in relation to water are to be considered and their knowledge is to be utilised effectively, then more women must be involved in water management ( Boateng and Kendie, 2015 ). However, there are factors which limit the potential for women's participation and arguably, including women in water management to fill gender quotas is not enough; to avoid tokenistic participation and have meaningful participation instead, a 'contextually specific understanding' of women's needs is required to create appropriate solutions ( Lasiter and Stawicki, 2014 ).  Figure 1: Women professionals in water management in Tanzania  Limitations to the meaningful participation of women: The lack of spare time that women have due to their commitment to domestic work, such as water c
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Women, WASH and MHM

As ' World Toilet Day ' just passed (a day which raises awareness of tackling the global sanitation crisis to achieve SDG 6 ), I thought it would be appropriate to explore the links between water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and gender. Despite the fact that North Africa's coverage of access to sanitation is at 90%, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) only has a 30% coverage ( UN, 2014 ). It has been recognised that a lack of access to WASH facilities disproportionately affects the health of those who are menstruating ( Corburn and Hildebrand, 2015 ). Today, I will look at how a lack in WASH facilities can facilitate ' period poverty ' and how menstrual health management (MHM) can be improved.  Period Poverty I admittedly did not know about period poverty until a girl in my school started the ' Free Periods ' campaign. I soon learned that period poverty is the lack of access to 'sanitary products, menstrual hygiene education, toilets, hand washing facilities, and
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Gender-Based Violence and WASH

 In last week's post, I briefly touched on the topic of gender-based violence  (GBV) in relation to water collection. This week, I wanted to do a short post exploring the links between GBV and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), using informal settlements in Kenya as a case study. I will be looking specifically at the infrastructural causes of GBV (e.g. poor WASH facilities) and the social causes (e.g. societal taboos).  Figure 1: Toilet in Mathare slum, Nairobi, Kenya The lack in provision of adequate WASH facilities increases women's vulnerability to GBV. Women who lack these basic infrastructures are forced to walk to shared toilet facilities or to even openly defecate. Studies in informal settlements within Nairobi, Kenya found that women who had to walk even 100m to use a public toilet during the night would be at risk of being abused or harassed ( UN Water, 2020 ; Winter and Barchi, 2015 ). Due to poor security and a lack of sufficient lighting, it becomes easier for me
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Water Collection: A Woman's Burden

In my previous post, I looked at the inequality in the use and access to groundwater resources between men and women. This week, I will focus on the collection of water and how this affects women in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), physically and mentally. Restricted infrastructures and access to reliable water sources (e.g. piped water systems) results in the burden of extensive travelling to collect water; unfortunately, this responsibility usually falls on women and girls. Indeed, it is estimated that every day women and girls spend around 200 million hours collecting water ( UNICEF, 2016 ). Considering that more than two-thirds of those living in SSA have to leave their houses to collect water, it is integral that we understand how this burden disproportionately affects women ( Graham et al, 2016 ).  What are the effects on women? Across SSA, it is primarily women and girls who bear the brunt of water collection. A study carried out across 24 SSA countries by Graham et al (2016) found
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