Biased Boreholes

With Dr Tatiana's lectures, we introduced sanitation to our discussion. I finally saw some explicit relation to gender; whereas we previously identified gaping inequities in water supply within African communities, Africa's "water problem" certainly extends beyond mere scarcity, and women receive much of the burden that comes with skyrocketing urbanisation, unplanned, makeshift infrastructure, and most crucially, cultural taboos to do with the issue of human waste management. We see how a history of downplaying the importance of hygiene still continues to implicate women today:

1. Where sanitation has been neglected for centuries, the domestic sphere is the last place where the use of already scarce water for the purpose of hygiene becomes acceptable. As I have brought up in previous posts, the home is the short end of the stick in the public-private dichotomy, where women perform all their labour but are never rewarded nor even recognised as labourers. Along that thread, as I have mentioned before, though daily life would not be possible without the preparation of food by (typically) women, washing one's hands before food preparation is often not viewed as an important or acceptable use of the scarce resource.

2. When sanitation is taboo and absent as a concern from infrastructural development, individuals need to take responsibility, often involving compromises. There is a need to dispel tropes which describe Africans as being "ignorant" or unaware of the importance of hygiene and sanitation; as we can see from point 1., individuals are more than aware of their cruciality, but do not have the infrastructural or social means to prioritise them.

African women know that their community toilets are far more hygienic alternatives to open defecation – but at night, in places without electric street lighting, going out to communal toilets alone is just not worth the risk of gender-based violence, nor is waiting to go in groups worth the effort. Amnesty International's report on the experiences of women in slums in Nairobi, Kenya, has an entire section devoted to sanitation, and how the lack of sanitation disproportionately affects women; for example, they note:

“Women, more than men, suffer the indignity of being forced to defecate in the open, at risk of assault and rape. Women, generally being responsible for the home and for children and other dependents, are most affected by a lack of sanitation and by the indignity of living without sanitation…"

"Women tell us regularly how they are at risk of being raped or assaulted after dark or at night if they were to attempt to walk even 100 metres to a latrine near their houses; what chance is there that they would use a facility that may be three times further as is the dominant case here in Kibera?…"

Concerns about safety are also ever so relevant when it comes to menstruation. Girls and young women choose not to go to school because they know that without proper disposal facilities, their tampons and pads may clog school toilets. We see how period poverty too comes under the umbrella of sanitation, and how menstrual waste is especially implicated as an object at the intersection of two already-subordinated identities – femininity and waste.

It has been some time since my last post. Honestly, it was difficult to even think of gender in most of what we have discussed in class – private sector water provision? Resource development? Geopolitics? We know gender affects so much of our lived experiences, yet so much of academia writes of so much experience as though fact, and not partial or subjective.

Linda McDowell, the pioneer of much of feminist geography, pointed out that it was "remarkable" how 'sexless' geographical analysis was. Her words might still ring true today; for perhaps practical reasons, there tends to be a lack of distinction between the experiences of men and women in academia, particularly where gender may not be viewed as very relevant. Yet, we know gender affects daily life; it seems imprudent to even suggest that it would not be a relevant influence at any point in time.

Is it likely then that only a subset of the world's experiences are described by and explained in the literature? The problem is not so much so that it is difficult to account for every intersectional axis – gender, socioeconomic status, race, sexuality – in every analysis, but which intersectional axes are represented and have power. As echoed by Robinson (2003), while theory is often representative of a "supposedly unmarked" and "unlocated realm", it is in fact "profoundly tagged by its production in the dominant Anglo-American 'heartland' of graduate schools, research funds and publication outlets". Importantly, social identities are reconstituted through its intersections with other important identities across space and time, and the relationship between different social categories are not simply additive.

This is why it would be gravely inadequate for the literature on Africa's water problem to be focused purely on the experiences of "the urban poor", or the "rural". In fact, the identities of socioeconomic status, or rural/urban status, overlap, enmesh, interact messily with other social identities, and are dynamic through space and time. Precisely because much of academia is so Anglocentric and from the global North (albeit the problematic term), the realities and lived experiences of individuals in the "global South" are neglected or inaccurately portrayed. The poor woman in squatter housing in Cameroon lives a much different life from the poor man in Cameroon, though the current literature may analyse the situation

To end, I will highlight some possible instances in which the current level of analysis or academic narrative may be insufficient, and in doing so highlight the gaps in the current literature on Africa and its water problem:

Private sector water provision 
I have discussed briefly before how though the private sector aims to funnel water resources ideologically "fairly" via the free market. However, this assumes that all other factors are constant (ceteris paribus), when in reality that is hardly the case. The free market does not account for much of the inequities that come with socioeconomic status, gender, and other axes of differences across society.

Transboundary water resources

The Shaduf, ancient Egyptian water collection device – observe the demographics in this work Source: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1021/8371/products/XGJC1_020_743e57c2-f565-4e01-a9f3-ec1bb66c988a.jpg?v=1571713307

We discussed what might be some factors determining the distribution of transboundary water resources in Africa, for instance the Nile Basin, which flows through 10 countries. For instance, historical uses of water may strengthen the case for water rights; in what is referred to as "prior appropriation", riparians who have been using the water for longer or were the first to use it are often the ones who still have much of the right to, say, the Nile. However, as we have discussed, much of historic infrastructure that was (and may still be) in use to acquire the water are likely have to been used/in use by women after all – Africa's primary water collectors.

In that sense, could transboundary resources and historical infrastructure entrench women in the cycle of unpaid labour and water collection? A state that has been using water from the Nile for thousands of years have much justification for continuing to do so, but also has much justification for not changing much of the social circumstances surrounding water use. This has great implications for gender equality and women in Africa, and as states fight to keep control over transboundary water resources, they might in reality be fighting to keep their women struggling.

It is tempting to discount the role of gender in private sector water provision. Whereas in community-managed water provision we saw how deeply mere matters of scale (shifting agency from the large-scale public to the small-scale home) could implicate female participation in water-related decisions, in private sector water provision it is difficult to locate the role of gender in the equation. 

This week, we discussed the subtopic of community-based water systems in Africa. Water systems, when developed and maintained by communities, are significantly different from the more top-down approaches to water provision that may be the norm in the Anglo world, such as the provision by the government or private sector. 


However, we know that these numerous and complicated interactions between the hydrological and social worlds (if at all they are distinct) are deeply constitutive of, also indicative of, gender roles and dynamics. What then might community-based water supply imply for gender in Africa?
Previously, I highlighted the normative ideologies which governed via social pressure what types of work African women could partake in, and conversely, should refrain from. The range of work that is considered that "of women" – preparing food, managing domestic utilities, emotional labour – make clear the hegemonic view that a woman's place is in the domestic, the private, and the home. On the other hand, male work is always public. It is, most importantly, paid; it is recognised in the formal economy; it is always visible, and everyday life is structured around this form of work. This is what is referred to as a separate spheres ideology, and highlights how and why supposedly 50-50 divisions in labour may be far from an equal binary. 

The public sphere is placed on a pedestal. It is after all the domain of paid work and public recognition, and is viewed to be the building block of trade and society. The private sphere is in perpetual under-recognition. That everyday life would not be possible without the workings of women in the domestic sphere is not in the slightest a common revelation, and as such the work of women is hardly considered work at all. 
As a result, as pointed out by Crow et al. (2011), African women experience time poverty, because the lines between "work" and "home" for them are, after all, absent. Home is for rest, yet for women, home is precisely where they cannot rest. Albeit spending more time at work, household work and emotional labour is hardly viewed as "work", but more often than not a mere biological or natural duty for women. Hence, women spend more time at work, but they never rest – they are time-poor. 

Crow et al. point out that action can be taken to decrease the workload for women, particularly in the domain of water supply. For instance, by developing piped water systems, households can receive water directly, instead of requiring that (likely) women travel on foot for hours to collect it. However, it requires a great deal of collective action successfully call for the implementation of pipes. Though women bear most, if not all responsibility for household water supply, it is precisely women who also have the least (if any) ability to mobilise this collective action, for even the simple technology of spring protection requires significant labour, capital and collective decision-making, of which African women are often institutionally and structurally excluded from. Furthermore, such barriers tend to be embedded in wider exclusionary traditions and policies; for instance, the exclusion of women in irrigation decisions may not be entirely independent, but grounded in wider exclusionary traditions which hindered women from receiving land tenures, though they may be well-accepted as the keepers of the land otherwise. 

Albeit these difficulties, should the management of water supply be somehow nevertheless transferred successfully to the community, we will witness a shift away from water provision at the public scale. A move closer towards the scale of the domestic, then, implies a great deal for African women. Where the separate spheres ideology has been deeply entrenched, shifting the decision-making and authority downscale and closer towards the domestic sphere, may be the first step in increasing female participation and autonomy in hydrological decisions (in which they were always deeply implicated).  
However, we need to be cautious. The merits of somewhat easily increasing female participation without being contingent on monumental shifts in long-entrenched gender norms are valid; yet, they might obscure the restrictive structures which trap women within the subservient domestic sphere, and hinder women from accessing the dominant public sphere and its benefits. Community water management increases the participation of women in a system in which they are thoroughly invested, but we must move beyond to attack the very structures which perpetuate gendered public-private dichotomies to begin with. 

Mwanawaki ni maji, they say in Swahili; women are water. 

Figure 1: Millennium Development Goals for 2015

Figure 2: Sustainable Development Goals for 2030

In Africa specifically, we see the importance of water to agriculture. A whopping 83.1% of water is withdrawn for agriculture in Africa, compared to just 12.6% for domestic use. On a continent where agriculture is the primary driver to the economy, uninhibited access to water is, for palpable reasons, crucial for the success of the agricultural industry. Yet, access to water is made disproportionately difficult for women, who play an equally (if not more) prevalent role in agriculture. This demonstrates how sexist social norms and historical prejudices are frustratingly prioritised over food security and development.

For instance, certain social norms surrounding women may not be congruent with certain forms of water extraction for agriculture, as suggested by Villholth (2013). She discusses the degree to which groundwater irrigation specifically suits the “roles and capabilities of women” in Sub-Saharan Africa; quoting firstly women’s historical exclusion from land inheritance and thus the capital required to invest in irrigation equipment, and secondly the pressure on women to spend their time fulfilling “traditional “women’s”” chores” such as fetching firewood and, rather ironically, bringing food and water to their husbands working in the fields. Thus, though groundwater offers a stable alternative to otherwise fluctuant, weather-dependent surface waters, and hence such immense potential to increase yield – we see how the historical exploitation of female labour and institutional barriers to female autonomy impede African agricultural development and food security. 

It is precisely because of this that we must question narratives of Africa as necessarily "water-scarce". We have criticised ethnocentric definitions of "water scarcity", for failing to consider that the overall demand for water on the continent just may not be as high as in other regions. Could improving access to water in Africa, then, be merely a matter of increasing equitability? Women, whether in agriculture or in the household, find water, prepare water, use water; women are water. Perhaps gender is the answer to improving the relationship between Africa and its water.