3.3 Gender, Water and Poverty

Introduction

Water is essential to human beings and all forms of life. But pollution and lack of access to clean water is proliferating the cycle of poverty, water-borne diseases, and gender inequities (Khosla and Pearl, 2003). Water is an entry point for sustainable development, poverty eradication, human rights, reproductive and maternal health, combating HIV and AIDS, energy production, improved education for girls and a reduction in morbidity and mortality. And yet there are still 1.1 billion people without access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion without access to adequate sanitation. This situation has an enormous negative impact on women and children.

There is deepening poverty worldwide, and the most vulnerable groups are women and children. Women experience poverty differently than men, as they are generally treated unequally. It is estimated that, of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty around the world, 70% are women. Women work two-thirds of the world's working hours, produce half of the world's food, and yet earn only 10% of the world's income and own less than 1% of the world's property (UN Millennium Campaign, 2005).

Why gender, water and poverty?

In 1997, the Human Development Report revealed that countries with the lowest gender-related development indices (Sierra Leone, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali) also had high poverty rates and little access to water, health and education. Other, countries with high poverty rates (Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Paraguay) also had high rates of social, gender and ethnic inequality (Schreiner, 2001).

Women are more vulnerable than men to chronic poverty due to gender inequalities in various social, economic and political institutions. Such inequalities can be found in the uneven distribution of income, control over property or income and access to productive inputs (such as credit), decision-making resources and water resources, rights and entitlements that often favour men in opposition to women. Women are also subject to bias and social exclusion in labour markets.

According to the United Nations Development Programme, five years after world leaders signed a commitment towards reducing poverty, “the gap between MDG targets for halving poverty and projected outcomes is equivalent to an additional 380 million people in developing countries living on less than a dollar a day.” Women and children carry an unequal burden of deepening poverty.

Definitional Misconceptions

Poverty is multi-dimensional, location specific and varies by age, culture, gender and other socio-economic aspects. Perceptions of poverty also differ from women to men: for example, in Ghana men defined poverty as the inability to generate income, while women viewed it as food insecurity (Narayan, 2000).

Poverty is not only about material deprivation; it also includes a lack of voice or power, vulnerability to crises and other adverse situations and limited capacity to cope with such vulnerabilities. If water resources are located far away from homes, women and girls have to walk further to collect water, thus reducing the time available for productive work. Effective water management offers social networks for women through management committees, but very often women end up doing unskilled and unpaid work related to water management. Continuing to link poverty to material well-being masks other dimensions of poverty, such as powerlessness and exclusion from decision making.

Measuring poverty: the gender dilemma

The traditional methods of measuring poverty have been through Gross Domestic Product or household income statistics, masking gender differentials within the household.Participatory poverty assessments (PPAs) are an instrument for including poor women’s and men’s views in the analysis of poverty and the formulation of strategies to reduce it through public policy interventions (Norton, 2001).

Gender, Poverty and the Environment: A three-way interaction

While separate Millennium Development Goals have been set for poverty, gender and the environment (encompassing water and sanitation), they are interrelated and there is a three-way interaction among them. Water is essential for the well being of human beings, vital for economic development and a basic requirement for the health of ecosystems. Clean water for domestic purposes is essential for human health and survival and, combined with improved sanitation and hygiene, it will reduce morbidity and mortality especially among children. Water is also vital for other facets of sustainable development such as environmental protection, food security, empowerment of women, education of girls and reduction in productivity loss due to illnesses. Water is a catalytic entry point for developing countries in the fight against poverty and hunger, and for safeguarding human health, reducing child mortality and promoting gender equality and protection of natural resources (UN Millennium Task Force on Water and Sanitation, 2005).

The HIV and AIDS pandemic, which is both a cause and a consequence of the vulnerability that is characteristic of poverty, has driven some countries to adopt home-based care approaches as health institutions fail to cope with the demand for services. The home-based care approach implies that there should be water of sufficient quality and quantity to avoid secondary infections as well as to reduce the burdens of care-givers, who, in most cases, are women and girls.

Some Policy Implications

In IWRM, water is viewed as both an economic, environmental and a social good, and thus in some cases it can be considered a commodity responding to the principles of supply and demand. It thus has a market value determined for certain uses (Thomas, Schalkwyk and Woroniuk, 1996). The water sector is often divided into productive and non-productive water uses. The non-productive uses of water (health, domestic chores and sanitation) tend to be the responsibility of women and are not considered in economic assessments. These should be incorporated into the assessment of relative economic values of water resources to allow for the understanding and consideration of the interdependence between productive and domestic water.

Water as a commodity implies that the development of water resources should be based on demand. However, poor women are generally unable to express their demands for services, nor do they have the capacity to defend their rights, especially if there are recognisable and transferable property rights over water. In addition, children-headed households have even lower capacity to express demand and defend their rights.

In order to meet the water demands of poor women, governments must collect sex-disaggregated data and develop gender-sensitive indicators in all sectors, including water, sanitation, agriculture and irrigation. The use of participatory tools is also important for engaging the voiceless and less educated who may have difficulties understanding written text. Only this way can priorities of the poor women and men and boys and girls be heard and understood.