The Burden of Water Collection: The Case Study of Nyanchwa, Kenya

 

In my previous post, I contextualised the water scarcity in Africa. Due to restricted water access in Sub-Saharan Africa, one (usually the female) must leave their home and travel to access water. It is estimated that approximately two thirds of the Sub-Saharan Africa population are required to collect water (Graham et al 2016).  Thus, in this post I want to highlight issues associated with water collection, and how it accentuates the gender discrepancy. I will use Varickanickal et al (2020) case study of Nyanchwa, a village in Kenya, examining the water-risk perceptions of female water collectors to illustrate this. The reason for choosing Kenya is rather personal. my grandfather was born and raised in Kenya, and I remember talking to him a few years ago about his life there. A detail I remembered was how every morning, his servant (who was female) used to spend about an hour daily collecting water. This gave me an incentive to research further the water collection situation in Kenya  

Whilst researching this topic, I was surprised about the limited research surrounding water collection in general, as well as how it impacts gender and development, and emphasises research examining the intersection between gender and water is generally is lacking (Pouramin et al 2020). 

A map showing the location of Nyanchwa, a locality in Kenya:source

Within Sub-Saharan Africa, due to traditional cultural and patriarchal ideologies, women tend to be responsible for domestic chores such as cooking and cleaning, and this also means they are disproportionately burdened with collecting water in order to carry out these domestic chores (Boone et al 2010). This has many impacts:

Firstly, water collection is a physical burden. The women recruited in Varickanickal et al (2020) study talked about how difficult it was walking long distances with a child on your back and carrying barrels of water. Furthermore, elderly women, were more susceptible to the physical risks because of their lack of strength (Varicknickal et al 2020)

Secondly there are social risks. The participants talked about the foot path in Nyanchwa being very slippery. Furthermore, the girls would go at weird times in order to avoid congestion, but this tended to be night time, which can be dangerous since it means they are more susceptible to assault (Varicknickal et al 2020).

Thirdly there is the time lost by collecting water, or time poverty, meaning not having a sufficient amount of discretionary time (Kalenkoski and Himerick 2013). As is the case for many poor households, they rely heavily on family members’ time and labour for the provision of good and services which are necessary for wellbeing and survival. And females are disproportionally burdened with this responsibility (Blackden and Woodon 2006). In fact, it is approximated that women and girls in total spend 200 million hours every day collecting water(UNICEF 2016).The fact that water collection is a burden which falls upon women, emphasises the uneven disadvantage of time poverty towards women and has many secondary impacts: In Nyachwa, the time spent by the women collecting water affects their ability to participate in economic activities, worsened by the fact there are no nearby pipes (Varicknal et al 2020) thus further emphasising the effects of water inaccessibility. Furthermore, many females cannot attend school due to collecting water, and those who do manage to go school, suffer from loss of concentration (Graham et al 2016).

Sadly, women bear the brunt of the impacts surrounding water collection, and this highlights the extent of the gender discrepancy. If we draw back our attention to the SDGs,  in terms of gender intersectionality, SDG goal 6 target 6.2 highlights the need for equitable access of water to all, with special attention to the needs of women and girls. Whilst this does a good job at highlighting the general need for improved WaSH amongst females, but there is little focus on the act of water collection and the impact which this has(Pouramin et al 2020). This highlights the need of fully addressing intersectionality in all aspects of water in order to achieve sustainable development.