Water, Gender and Development

Addressing development concerns must take into account the role of women within the community and household contexts. Women are responsible for most household activities, which are crucial for their wellbeing as well as their households. This blog will explore women's rights, cultural norms and development strategies in the context of some rural communities in the Volta Region of Ghana, East Africa.  Map showing the Volta River region, Ghana Women's rights  Access to resources varies between men and women. Power imbalances that underly access to resources and ownership are directly nuanced by gender . Women have limited control over resources because of patriarchal land ownership systems, which vary between African countries. This means that women are dependent on men in terms of their livelihoods and survival, which can decrease their contribution to development. Most women in rural Ghana rely on agriculture to make a living and sustain their households. The land ne...

Welcome to my first introductory blog in a series of blogs about water, women and development in Africa. This first blog will briefly outline the importance of water, human ecology and gender when discussing development in Africa and will touch upon positionality, and the significance of the way we write about Africa. My interest in this topic sparked from the following statistic:  About three quarters of households in sub-Saharan Africa fetch water from a source away from their home and 50% to 85% of the time, women are responsible for this task.  The statistics makes you wonder: Why is water so far away from homes? What role do women play when it comes to water and how does this affect development itself?   Water in Africa Africa may initially appear abundant with water resources with large river basins of the Nile, Congo or Niger, yet it has the lowest proportion of people with access to safe water globally. Access to safely managed water by people is entirely dependen...