Sanitation and gender

I found myself losing concentration in the geography common room and ended up going through the haphazard collection of forgotten dissertations, journals and books that fill the shelves. Leading on from my last blog, I tried to find work by an African academic, and I came upon a book by A.Kalu, concerning narratives of women and development in Africa. It argues the status of women in much of Africa is key to understanding development issues. When considering sanitation this is especially true. I found studies showing- most of the unpaid daily tasks around sanitation and water are left to women, see figure 1, with harsh implications. In one study of 15 African countries, all had women and girls as the primary water collectors(Graham et al.,2016). It is mostly women who are responsible not just for drawing water from the well but for transportation, storage and cleaning public and private toilet facilities.(Caruso et al.,2022)

2/3^rds of the population in Africa must leave their home to get water. It's women and children who have to walk to the water with consequences for their health in far-reaching ways including Neck pain, spinal injury, and even spontaneous miscarriages from heavy workloads.

Figure 1 who fetches water by region :Source: United Nations, 2015. The World's Women 2015: Trends and Statistics. New York: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Division. Sales No. E.15.XVII.8, Statistical Annex.

Having to carry the water puts limits on the quantity available every day. This affects women most since they have have greater need for water sanitation services during pregnancy and because of their major role as carers for infants and the elderly. Moreover, with access to sanitation limited, women and girls have difficulty managing their menstruation. Poor menstrual hygiene management along with dangers to physical health has severe psychosocial impacts(Ray,2016). It affects education too, in rural Africa, there are poor attendance and high dropout rates for girls after puberty which can be partly linked to the fact 40% of schools there don’t have basic sanitation(Sommer,2015).

 

Source: world bank

Poor sanitation services also make women more vulnerable to sexual violence. Kayser's 2019 paper looks at refugee camps in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Guinea exposing a crisis of physical and sexual harassment. In the camps women either openly defecate or travel long distances to toilets. There, trauma from wars and collapsed social structures converge with inadequate sanitation facilitates creating epidemics of sexual violence that severely restrict freedom and opportunities for women(Miller,2017).

Clearly, inadequate sanitation is a women's issue and they are affected most by it. Thus, women must be included in water and sanitation decision-making, Malawi set up local water management committees in the 1980s and it was only when project leaders replaced men with women to head the committees did they start to be productive. Women were the ones using and dealing with water supplies day-to-day, they know what is needed when it comes to community water management.