BLOGS | NGOBI | GENDER

As the month of March comes to an end, International Women’s Day and World Water Day come to my mind. 

Both days are important as far as access to water and sanitation and gender equality are concerned. As the position that universal access to water is key to women’s empowerment, it is critical to interrogate how women’s political and socio-economic participation and opportunities are disproportionately affected by women’s inadequate access to water and sanitation. 

It is not by chance that women are responsible for collecting water for their households, a task that remains unpaid, yet time-consuming, dangerous and backbreaking. 

It is a social construct, a personal safety and health issue for a Ugandan woman and girls, and an everyday practice that requires her to walk long distances on foot for about six hours more than once a day to access clean water at the expense of education, community programmes and economic activities. 

WaterAid estimates that about 38 million Ugandans lack access to safely managed water services. Thus, families without access to clean and safe water either force women and girls to walk long distances in search of water or resort to surface water sources, resulting in water-borne diseases and other challenges like sexual harassment.

Yet, when their family members, especially children contract a diarrhoeal disease, one of the top three childhood killers in Uganda, women shoulder the burden as the primary carers. Besides walking long distances to access water, WaterAid estimates that women and girls lose about 266 million hours daily worried about where to find a toilet, going to a toilet outside the house or sharing one with men and boys. 

Thus, with about 14.6 million Ugandans still defecating in the open, to women and girls, access to water and sanitation is more than just boreholes, taps, toilet seats, and holes.

It is a matter of health, safety, potential and dignity which steals about 4,435 million hours of their time and increases their risk of shame, abuse and assault.

The World Bank estimates that over 300 million women and girls menstruate daily. However, menstrual periods are yet to be normalised in our workplaces, schools, communities, quiz groups and living rooms. 

There is a continued absence of gender-segregated changing rooms, with clean water and soap, safe and hygienic absorbent materials as well as disposal systems for women and girls to manage their periods with dignity without fear of stigma and embarrassment. 

The impact is huge as SNV reveals that over 50% of women and girls do not have access to menstrual products, with more than half of Ugandas’s girls dropping out of school before completing P7 mainly due to menstrual challenges.

Although extant research has largely focused on the impact of period poverty on girls’ education, women struggle to change pads at workplaces with mixed-gender toilets.

USAID shows that a woman’s anticipation of poor menstrual management at her workplace results in absenteeism and poor performance, which leads to lost wages and hinders economic empowerment.        

 Lack of access to water and sanitation means lack of equality and denial of women and girls to access to social and economic power to sit on decision-making and leadership tables. 

The critical question is, how do we get it right? As we celebrate the milestones realized with access to water and sanitation, let us pause and ask; are we seeing these through the gender lens? 

Failing to empower women and girls to change their world starts with our failure to empower them with access to water and sanitation at home, workplaces, and school to be academically, economically, and politically empowered. 

Without practical access to water and sanitation by women and girls, we shall continue seeing them struggle to complete education, perform poorly, unsafe, harassed and less confident, with limited economic and political opportunities and roles to play in our communities. Women and girls’ participation in water and sanitation development, governance, and management will enable the development of technologies, policies, and action plans that respond to the health, safety, privacy, and dignity of women and girls.

 The writer is the WASH Manager, Viva con Agua Uganda.