Women and girls - confronting the inequality of collecting water

Imagine a world where tens of millions of women and girls spend hours to collect water everyday. Collectively, isn’t that a colossal amount of time spent going back and forth to the water source? What would they do if that time was freed up? More studying, perhaps for the girls, or they can use the time being just what they have to be - children. Instead, their days are spent walking miles and miles to ensure life’s basic need is met. Equally, women could use this valuable time for more economic activities. 

This imagination is not implausible given that women and girls spend 200 million hours collecting water.  What’s also true is that most of these women are in low-income, poor and rural as well as some urban communities.  Each one of them can spend anywhere from half an hour to several hours a day trekking to and from the water supply source. 

Women and girls face the blunt of responsibilities when it comes to sourcing and securing the water needs of families. It is women and girls who have to give up their time, walk untold distances - sometimes face risks of rape or other forms of attack. Even when the water is brought to the house, it is often women and girls who have to ensure it is kept safe for human consumption- ensuring it is chlorinated when necessary and making sure it is kept covered at all times to avoid dirty from contaminating it. In this way, women and girls are responsible for the large part of the gamut of household water supply from collection, transportation, storage to supervising its use. 

The time this takes is insurmountable- 200 million hours for collection and transportation alone. If this burden was put on one woman and she started the journey in 1 AD with a bucket of water on her head, she would still not have reached her destination yet, with at least 20,000 more years to go. Yet the world has come so far with technological and resource advancements. Simply put the practice of fetching water robs our women and girls many precious hours each day, and like many advancements we have made, water supply and sanitation services need to catch up. The opportunity cost is too huge to ignore. 

Today, while we honor the women and girls at the forefront of the water crisis, we should realize that, if not resolved, climate change will make this worse and the economic and health crisis created by COVID19 are also likely to complicate this situation. 

We honor the strength and resilience of women and we should take their hard work as a call to action for a world with water, sanitation and hygiene services for all.