Female Participation: Could This a Step Forward?

In the last entry, I uncovered the effectiveness of Coca-Cola's water initiative on providing wash services to people and alleviating inequalities between men and women. As previously mentioned, they appeared to have success when incorporating women in water management and decision making – thus begging the question, is female participation the way forward? Spoiler alert: Yes.

Incorporating women in the decision-making process is logical and makes sense. As we know from one of my earlier entries, women already collect water and use it for household uses like cooking and cleaning and are the decision-makers in the household – so why would this not extend outwards into local and national policy? Through making, women agents of change in water management and decision making can then allow them to lead fulfilled lives in which they are able to engage in economic, social and political activities, thus enabling the development of the communities they are in. Additionally, water projects become a lot better managed when women are considered as studies have shown that they share water resources more equitably. 

Zambia and WARMA

WARMA (Water Resources Management Authority) was founded in 2011 with the intention of regulating the management of water to ensure equal access to water for all. It does so by adopting both a participatory and multi-sectoral approach. They actively engage women in the decision making process in developing initiatives to help improve water access through games and activities, as well as giving them ownership of boreholes and more closely accessible water sources. This has proven to be one of the more beneficial ways of combatting this problem as it alleviates gender inequalities, improves water access, coinciding with the SDGs, and thus aiding development in these areas. It is also implemented by actors who know the situation at hand, rather than outer forces that could forcefully impose a neo-colonial form of development.

 

What are the downfalls of initiatives like this?

While the advantages to engaging women in participation are significant as seen in the example of Catherine in the video above, this is also met with some shortfalls. These include some women being hesitant to participate, regardless of any efforts made to include them. This stems from the social pressure of staying obedient and not overly outspoken that is so deeply rooted in these communities. Also, women already have primary responsibility for domestic roles that are time-consuming, thus reducing their availability to partake in these initiatives. This is why simply adding women to frameworks does not always suffice - we must understand their roles, constraints and ability in their participation. 

Bigger Picture

Also, while this has had some success in Zambia, this cannot be easily translated to every nation in Africa. As cities continue to grow and develop informal settlements, this makes it difficult to impose national government decisions. The absence of provisions and recognition of these sites may reduce the ability to be able to implement women participation in water management.  Also, patriarchal cultural norms as mentioned before and political corruption are still extremely deep-rooted in politics, in which men take decision making positions. Some countries may not be ready to eliminate this corruption and patriarchy in the system. This would require a long time to implement any changes to current patriarchal norms as this would need to occur through early education, to those who are even willing to provide this.

For countries that can, implementing a feminist lens into water management is certainly a step in the right direction into ensuring equitable usage of water between men and women.