Water and women: Inseparable relationship

Daily Star, Dhaka
http://www.thedailystar.net
MArch 22, 2005

World Water Day Special

By Santosh C Sarker
(Santosh C Sarker is a water professional and Deputy Director of Proshika. )

Give me a glass of water. I am very thirsty". This is an usual type of request or capricious insistence commonly made by a man to a woman in our society. Because, in most cases, it is women who serve food and water at home.

Regarding any waste of drinking water, often the women warn that the reserve might be exhausted if all are not careful. The fear is that it is only the women on whom the prime responsibility of collecting water, often from distant places, is imposed and it is they who are used to this in our social culture. Let us look at the names of some rivers in this part of the world. Most of them are feminine. The Ichhamati, the Mahananda, the Punarbhova, the Gudabori, the Kaberi, the Padma, the Ganges the Narmada etc. are few examples. Different literatures including the myths reveal that women play key roles also in protecting and saving water from contamination. Therefore, women are naturally linked with the source, supply and use of clean water.

Showing concerns for irrigation water requirements in the rice fields, besides homestead needs, is also a usual phenomenon with the rural women, specially the women sharecroppers. As I was actively involved in doing agriculture in my early life, I got the opportunity to explicitly observe how the rural women including my mother dealt with irrigation water in their daily life. To a woman, water is needed for her family members and domestic animals to drink, her cooking, washing, cleaning, bathing and, as said, irrigation in the crop fields. To a man, the concerns about water may be important but not as critical as a woman feels. With limited quantity of water, a woman is more capable than a man to complete all of the activities mentioned above. Evidences validate that a woman gives more value to water than a man does.

Clean water is the most essential item in our daily life. One can live without food for a few weeks but none can live without pure water even for a few days. At least two litres of water per day is required for human body to survive. Crops get wilted permanently if the soil regime where they grow remain consistently dry for consecutive days. Women play a key role in harvesting water for both the places. At home, drinking water is stored in the kitchen where usually women stay for a long time to cook and do other domestic works. Therefore, they first feel the shortage of water, if any, at home. What happens about the collection of water? Keeping few exceptions aside, have you ever generally seen a man carrying drinking water from its source to his home?

The answer is generally no. Women in flocks walk long distances to harness clean water and these scenarios are very common in Gujrat, Rajasthan and Madya Pradesh of India, and Rajshahi district of Bangladesh. This scenario is also common in all 16 Upazilas in the southern-western coastal regions of Bangladesh.

Water Partners International organisation reveals that the poor women in Africa and Asia walk an average of six kilometers a day to collect water. The poor women in the developing countries spend eight hours a day for collecting and carrying up to 20 litres of water on their heads in each trip. The world statistics reveal that women and female children carry water by walking over undulating horizontal distances in the plain land and climbing vertical distances in hilly areas in buckets/pitchers regardless of their physical difficulties and illness including pregnancy. To find safe and dependable water sources it is women who take initiatives.

Water means prosperity -- its scarcity means poverty, regardless of material wealth. Human rights advocate that when a woman lives in an unsafe and unhealthy environment or lacks access to clean water, she is not enjoying her fundamental human rights to a life of dignity and to an adequate standard of living. Keeping these truths in mind, the poor women-folk have intensified their further involvement in the water harvesting activities beyond their domestic world.

I must express my gratitude to a Delhi-based organisation, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), founded by Anil Agarwala, an eminent environment-activist for organising my trip Pani Yatra -- a water pilgrimage. As part of that visit, Ms. Nafisa Barot, an eminent water-activist of Ahmedabad district, showed us the catastrophe of the extreme poverty of people due to prolonged shortage of water in Utthan and other adjacent areas. She said that in the face of traditional resentment against women taking active part in community initiatives in the rural areas of Ahmedabad and Bhavnagar they showed exemplary courage and fortitude. As the heads (of course men) of the villages were extremely critical of women being the part of decision-making process, the women fought and played a stellar role in the pani samities and contributed their 80 percent labour to the construction of the water-harvesting structures.

The lessons that I had learned from the Uttahan drinking water harvesting project are: if women are given a chance and enough room, they are efficient managers of basic resources like water: the involvement of women not only changes the texture of development but brings about empowerment as well; and decentralised drinking water system becomes more sustainable if women are involved because they are the basic users. The lessons that I also learned are that ignoring the concerns about health and education for being poor, only shortage of water can make people "poorer" and vulnerable. It has been observed how poor people remove dikes (stops path-ways to water flow) and connects liniments (allows path-way to water flow) in the underground to allow water to be accumulated in the artificial wells in Rajkot where women were in the lead. Despite all odds, often against their own men folk, women came out and led the movement against water scarcity.

Women as water managers and irrigation water sellers are also not too uncommon nowadays in Bangladesh. Every year, rural women run more than hundred new irrigation schemes, for instance, under Proshika supervision. With a few exceptions, the women drive their own water yielding machines after receiving training and they also act as decision makers. They bargain with landowners for water sharing/pricing and irrigation scheduling. Poor rural women have shown their capability in doing water accounting and log-sheet preparation for irrigation water distribution. This has been continuing and greatly minimising gender discrimination, top and tail endear problems for water distribution and misuse of irrigation water in the rice fields. The women group members in Proshika earn an amount in each irrigation season that is greatly influencing their counterparts to bargain with them regarding resource distribution among the family members. Manual participation in irrigating water by using treadle pumps and bailing buckets in the crop fields by women is a common feature in rural Bangladesh as well. Here is the role of women as water managers and irrigation water sellers.

Water is both friend and foe of women. Combating tidal surge and flood water has become somewhat part of the livelihood of women in Bangladesh. Sudden floodwater intrusion at night first touches the poor women as they usually sleep on the floor with children. Consequently, the women account for huge losses of material wealth and their family healthcare. As the prevalence of dealing with water at home and outside is much higher among women than among men, therefore, the women are more prone to be attacked with water-borne diseases. Moreover, there is prevalence of badly affected men and women by arsenicosis. But the arsenic victim unmarried females are doubly vulnerable in case of their marriage. Because, in some arsenic prone areas the unmarried female victims are assumed to be doomed for any wrong doing in their life or for any wrong doing of their forefathers and they are assumed sinful there. Here, the relationship of women with water is natural, inseparable, and susceptible.

In this article I have tried to depict the natural disposition of women with water though the involvement of men with water cannot be ignored. At the advent of the national and international concerns about building global water partnership, the women are in the driving seats in most of the water-related fora, projects and water activism. However, efforts are being made to establish integrated water resource management where men and women, poor and non-poor people have the stakes for making water "everybody's business" or providing "water for all" in the greater interest of protection and conservation of clean water across the world.

http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/03/22/d50322090272.htm