Women and Gender Implications
Around the globe, gender norms deeply affect water use. In virtually all areas, women and girls take on primary responsibility for collecting water.[25] In approximately two-thirds of all households in developing countries, women and girls spend disproportionate time in water collection for home use.[26]
While water for home use has traditionally been seen as part of women’s domestic responsibilities, men have controlled water systems and regulated water resources. Farming, ditch digging, and the work of building and maintaining water utilities tend to be viewed as men’s tasks, despite the increasing involvement of women.[27] Furthermore, water policies that seem to be gender-neutral are not. Vivienne Bennet et al. point out, for instance, that rationing water has a disproportionately negative impact on women and homemakers, while improving the water infrastructure in low-income neighborhoods has a markedly beneficial effect for women.[28]
As Maria Silvia Emmanueli of the Habitat International Coalition of Latin America (HIC-AL), a UUSC partner, explains, it is women who “really worry for the family about housing, about water. In our experience, women are in the first line on housing rights.” She continues:
“Normally in Mexico and in many other places, women are . . . the most important leader[s] of a movement for housing rights and water. . . . In the case of water, women are the ones that are in charge of, for example, going to the river and taking water to their houses.”[29]
While it is now widely recognized that engaging women on the human right to water is essential to success, this does not mean that inclusive movements for the human right to water are easy.
Partner Spotlight: TGNP
While Tanzania’s constitution recognizes the human right to water, the Tanzania Gender Networking Program (TGNP), a UUSC partner, knows that the gendered division of labor perpetuates continued disparity in the rights of women and girls.
Women and girls are expected to provide water, firewood, and food for their families as well as care for children, elders, the ill, and disabled people. In communities without sufficient water infrastructure, this work gathering firewood, food, and water exposes them to the threat of sexual and physical abuse, keeps children from school, and monopolizes their time.[30] The burden of poor water access falls upon these women. TGNP mobilizes and unites women in marginalized communities to press for national policy that will bring real change for women, insisting that “making resources work for marginalized women is a constitutional issue.” As Anna Kikwa, TGNP’s program support manager, explains:
“Behind all of these things is the question of resources. Social services like water, health, education, are not allocated enough resources, so women are suffering.”[31]
TGNP’s work is motivated by what they call “transformative feminism” and a deep grassroots program of “intensive movement building” that begins by engaging women in dialogues about the problems they face.[32] As Lilian Liundi, TGNP’s executive director, explains, “Animators . . . go back to their communities . . . to conduct participatory action research. . . . People open up, they assess their problems, they analyze how they can solve the root cause of the problem . . . using artistic expression, skits, programs, drawings, to make sure that people open up, they speak their mind, what is effecting them, and come up with strategies.”
They then work with grassroots feminists to demand feedback from leaders, train community journalists to carry out local investigative journalism, establish knowledge centers, and host a capstone community gender festival. “Knowledge centers as hubs for collective organizing . . . networks of community groups,” Liundi explains. “Because wherever we go . . . we find that there are groups that are working in a stand-alone manner . . . so what we do is to make them connect . . . for a network, so that they can work together to form a collective voice . . . that will make their leaders respond.”[33]
Through this program, TGNP has mobilized women to hold their government accountable to the human right to water. In 2007, TGNP filed an amicus brief that helped to win a suit that transferred the Dar es Salaam water utility to public ownership. The following year, the organization’s advocacy resulted in the doubling of the national water budget and the establishment of a Ministry of Water to better oversee implementation of the human right to water in the country.
With a 2013 shift in political power, TGNP found increasing resistance, as poverty-reduction strategies were placed on a back burner behind national economic growth initiatives; yet, TGNP’s mobilization has met remarkable success. The group submitted a manifesto of 12 demands for securing the rights of marginalized women to the constitutional review commission in 2014. Liundi recalls, “Two or three days before the proposed constitution comes out, the issue of water was not there. . . . We organized a press conference and really talked about water very strongly.” She notes that the information gained through participatory action research was essential: “Because it is evidence-based data, the parliamentarians like it because they use it to argue their case.” They flooded parliamentarians with urgent testimonials from grassroots women, on the ground, who sent text messages through TGNP’s engagement program Jamii Voice (Community Voice).
Finally, when the new constitution was issued in 2014, it contained 11 of the 12 demands TGNP had made, including supporting the human right to water.[34]
Even with these incredible victories, TGNP has much work ahead. Liundi reflects, “Unfortunately there are issues of accountability and good governance that have been left out. . . . If the governments do not invest those issues in the constitution, even the gender equality principles will not be implemented very effectively.”[35]
Recently, UUSC has supported TGNP initiatives to train women to seek out leadership roles at their local and national level (with the slogan “Women’s Agenda: Secret to Victory 2015”) and held Tanzanian political candidates in the 2015 elections to account on the human right to water with the widely circulated Women’s Election Manifesto, workshops, press releases, and trainings. President-elect John Pombe Magufuli even affirmed his interest in TGNP’s campaign to get the “bucket off the women’s head” and relieve women of the imbalanced burden of water access.
[25] Pistilli, “Women, Water & Privatization,” 802.
[26] UNICEF, Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation 2010 Update, 29.
[27] Bennett et al., “Water and Gender,” 110; Juana Vera Delgade and Margreet Zwarteveen “The Public and Private Domain of the Everyday Politics of Water: The Constructions of Gender and Water Power in the Andes of Peru,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 9.4 (2007), 504.
[28] Bennet et al., “Water and Gender,” 111.
[29] Maria Silvia Emmanueli, interview by author, December 4, 2014.
[30] For an overview on the relationship between gender and the human right to water, see http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/gender.shtml.
[31] Lilian Liundi, Anna Kikwa, and Diana Sendende, interview by author, December 11, 2014.
[32] Lilian Liundi, Anna Kikwa, and Diana Sendende, interview by author, December 11, 2014.
[33] Lilian Liundi, Anna Kikwa, and Diana Sendende, interview by author, December 11, 2014.
[34] Lilian Liundi, Anna Kikwa, and Diana Sendende, interview by author, December 11, 2014.
[35] Lilian Liundi, Anna Kikwa, and Diana Sendende, interview by author, December 11, 2014.
