An Environmental Justice Issue

Having drifted a little from the focus of women in Africa in relation to water, this week I have looked at an article by Nghana Lewis entitled ‘An Issue of Environmental Justice: Understanding the Relationship among HIV/AIDs Infection in Women, Water Distribution, and Global Investment in Sub-Saharan Africa’. Whilst this article is a little dated (published in 2009) it focuses on linking two challenges that sub-Saharan African women face: HIV/AIDS and water.

Lewis remarks that when analysed together within this specific context, HIV/AIDS and the water crisis actually represent an environmental justice issue, particularly as among those living with HIV/AIDS across the globe, 70% are women of African descent (Lewis, 2009: 40). He argues that insufficient governmental management of water distribution has increased the vulnerability of women to health issues including HIV/AIDS. Additionally, he links this back to policies put in place by European powers during the period of decolonisation in Africa, which he suggests have resulted in clean water being unevenly distributed within Sub-Saharan Africa with rural women bearing the greatest burden of this.

This article is extremely interesting, and one I would encourage readers of this blog to explore as Lewis is one of few academic writers who has specifically linked HIV/AIDS and the water crisis and framed this from the perspective of gender. I have already explored, within a previous blog post, sanitation issues for women in relation to water in Africa, but to reconsider this by looking at the specific issue of HIV/AIDS has been particularly enlightening as this really demonstrates just how important it is to view water issues from the perspective of gender (though  it worth remembering that this is certainly not exclusive to Africa).

This led me to a more recent article by Krumdieck et al. (2016) entitled ‘Household water insecurity is associated with a range of negative consequences among pregnant Kenyan women of mixed HIV status’. This article suggests that water insecurity has a serious role in the health outcomes of women, particularly pregnant women, with HIV in Africa, though it is not entirely clear what this role is. They assessed the water insecurity experiences of 323 pregnant women in Kenya with mixed HIV status. Shockingly, 77.7% had had at least on experience of water insecurity in the past month.

Again, this article clearly links issues of water with HIV/AIDS issues for women. Both articles call for a serious need to address these issues via stronger government policies. A key issue is that of unequal distribution between rural and urban communities as well as between the poor and wealthy. By creating the better distribution of clean and safe water among all citizens of Africa, these articles suggest that health issues such as HIV/AIDS will be at least partly addressed and this will positively benefit women in particular by extension. However, that is not to say that distributing safe and clean water throughout Africa is by any means a simple task, but articles like this are clearly trying to encourage decision-makers to at least begin to address this problem.

References

Krumdieck, N.R., Collins, S.M., Wekesa, P., Mbullo, P., Boateng, G.O., Onono, M. and Young, S.L., 2016. Household water insecurity is associated with a range of negative consequences among pregnant Kenyan women of mixed HIV status. Journal of Water and Health, 14(6), pp.1028-1031.

Lewis, N. (2009). An Issue of Environmental Justice: Understanding the Relationship among HIV/AIDS Infection in Women, Water Distribution, and Global Investment in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Black Women, Gender & Families, 3(1), 39-64.

A Stronger Response to the Resistance of Female Empowerment

My blog post entitled ‘The Damaging Assumptions of Gender Mainstreaming’ posted on the 27th of November, received two really interesting comments. Baljeet Lakhan in particular referred me to an article called “‘African Culture’ is the biggest threat to the women’s rights movement” by Patience Akumu. This article encouraged me to re-think my initial ideas about the sensitivity NGOs, international organisations and national governments should have when attempting to implement female empowerment initiatives in particular regions of Africa. These initiatives can include encouraging women to give their opinions on the provision and management of basic services including water.

Whilst I have stated that time is needed to allow those that resist female empowerment (both men and women) to adjust their feelings regarding this issue, and I have acknowledged that female empowerment cannot be forced onto a community in the hope it will serve as a solution to problems regarding things like water management, this article (http://africanarguments.org/2015/03/09/african-culture-is-the-biggest-threat-to-the-womens-rights-movement-by-patience-akumu/) has made me reconsider how sensitive these actors should actually be. Perhaps it is too weak an approach to suggest that we must be sensitive to those who feel uncomfortable with the concept of female empowerment as still so much needs to be done to give women equal rights in Africa.

Akumu makes the points that women who try to take their place in the public sphere in Africa, quickly meet with ‘that glass ceiling called ‘African culture’’. Furthermore, she suggests that African women can only enjoy their rights within certain limits and the line is drawn when African men start to feel threatened. Female empowerment and gender equality in Africa, and indeed around the world, is critical to make women safer as well as ensure women’s voices are heard. This will result in more stakeholder participation for schemes such as those dealing with the management of water, and whilst this may not result in a perfect system, surely a greater wealth of knowledge and experience can only be a positive contribution.

Ultimately, I still stand by the point I made previously that female empowerment initiatives cannot be enforced on communities in Africa as a solution to issues associated with basic services such as water supply. Furthermore, if female empowerment initiatives are employed as a solution to these challenges, then a situation where empowering women has not resulted in improvements in basic services might be used as an example of how gender equality makes no difference. This could therefore be counter-productive and give communities an excuse to reject these initiatives.

In fact, female empowerment is important even if we do not see immediate improvements as the advantages reach far beyond the provision of basic services and the benefits will extend into the long-term. Similarly, as the article again mentions, there are examples of women in many parts of Africa demonstrating for their rights and challenging those who seek to oppress them. Female empowerment is crucial and ultimately allows the opinions of a major stakeholder to be heard, which is clearly important for water management schemes. Therefore, perhaps we shouldn’t be quite so sensitive to those who do not want female empowerment in their communities.

References

http://africanarguments.org/2015/03/09/african-culture-is-the-biggest-threat-to-the-womens-rights-movement-by-patience-akumu/

A Gap in the Literature

This week, I wanted to explore the innovations of women in Africa with regards to their domestic use of water having read a sentence in the Wendoh (2005) article last week which alluded to this idea. Considering women are more likely to have control over the use of water in the home for the purposes of cleaning, cooking and drinking, it stands to reason that, in a hydrologically variable continent such as Africa, in particular Sub-Saharan Africa, women will have come up with innovative ways of using water effectively within the home.

However, I have found there to be very few articles on this topic. There certainly seems to be a gap in the literature with regards to any innovative techniques women have come up with in order to use domestic water in the most efficient way possible. The collection of water by women can actually give them the opportunity to communicate, creating social cohesion with other women (https://www.ifad.org/documents/10180/2ffa1e63-8a8e-47ed-a4aa-cbf249fafab2). Therefore, women could perhaps seize these moments to share ideas about how best to use water in the home environment, particularly as this is arguably the only space in which women have control over water and can use it in the way they see fit as they are often excluded from discussions of more larger scale water management issues.

There seems to be a real focus in both literature and research on women’s exclusion from water management issues as well as how local governance and NGOs can include women in decision-making processes. There does not seem to be any real recognition of how women have themselves come up with innovative uses of water within their domain.

Certainly empowering women to be able to participate in decision-making processes and improving their access to land for agriculture is important, but this does ignore what women are doing now and seems to dismiss the fact that women have been coming up with their own small scale water management ‘schemes’ within their homes. I am not suggesting that women’s current actions are suitable and there shouldn’t be improvement or change, but perhaps the first stages of improvement need to not dismiss the actions of women in Africa at present and actually use these innovations in order to begin empowering women, giving them control over their empowerment rather than defining it for them.

I think it is important to remember that when empowering any stakeholder or community in water management issues, whether solely women or any other marginalised group, solutions cannot just come from above and then be enforced onto that particular community. Communities and stakeholders need to consulted for any ideas they have developed or thought of themselves as communities can come up with small-scale solutions that can be implemented with the help of other actors rather than the actors coming in and dictating how the community should act. 

If any readers of this post do know of studies undertaken which assess current innovations of women in Africa with regards to the domestic use of water, I would be grateful for any comments.

References

https://www.ifad.org/documents/10180/2ffa1e63-8a8e-47ed-a4aa-cbf249fafab2

Wendoh, S., & Wallace, T. (2005). Re-thinking gender mainstreaming in African NGOs and communities. Gender & Development, 13(2), 70-79.