In this three part series I will discuss how water management initiatives can potentially help gender equity in rural Indian villages.
NESWAD, GUJARAT – “Why should we go and collect water! We have brought married women to do all this work.” This is a comment madeby the male head of household during a focus group discussion as reported by Sara Ahmed of the Center for Environment Education in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
Let us explore some of the implications of this sometimes brutal task.
In some rural villages, domestic water collection is the responsibility of young women (daughters and daughters-in-law) and small girls. If there are no young women in the family, then older women go get the water. According to Ms. Ahmed, men typically go collect water during periods of scarcity as this usually entails going out of the village to neighboring water sources.
Women typically carry three pots of water on their head. Together these pots can weigh between 75 to 95 pounds depending on the amount of water and how much the pots weigh. Women may take between three to six trips to collect water depending on the time of year and the number of people in the household. Each trip can last betweeb one to two hours based on the distance of the water source from home, type of terrain and the availability of water.
There are physical pressures put on the women, especially on their backs and necks, carrying these heavy pots through steep terrain. The physical strain can be made worse during summer heat when it can get up to 113 degrees (as it was today in central Gujarat) – especially when women have to wait in long lines at village wells.
Apart from physical and social stresses, the additional time that women have to spend for collecting water means that they forego potential economic opportunities. This impedes their ability to work in the famring fields or in factories in nearby villages or towns. The implications here are that total household income and general household decision-making drastically decreases.
Economic losses, not withstanding, long hours spent fetching water affects education opportunities for girls. Often times, girls have to spend time looking after younger siblings constraining them from attending school regularly or dropping out altogether.
Next time, we’ll explore gender and knowledge of water use.
