Authors: Jay P. Graham , Mitsuaki Hirai , Seung-Sup Kim
Affiliated organisation: George Washington University
Type of publication: Research article
Site of publication: journals.plos.org
Date of publication: June 2016
Introduction
Over two-thirds of the population in sub-Saharan Africa report leaving their homes to collect water, and many rural water systems are often non-functional, exacerbating the difficulty of water collection and augmenting health problems. Thus, the provision of water sources in proximity to households would likely facilitate the collection sufficient water for uses that would improve domestic and personal hygiene.
Only two of the fifteen countries, Cameroon and Nigeria, had less than half of the households reporting women as their primary water collector at 45.8% and 46.6%, respectively.
Why a gender- and child- perspective for water collection labor is needed
In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), water collection labor needs to be considered from a gender- and child- perspective for many reasons. First, women and children are generally responsible for water collection in many SSA countries. The most commonly observed water carriers in six rural communities of South Africa were adult women (56%) followed by female children (31%), male children (10%), and adult males (3%).
Women were the primary collectors of water in over half of the households included in the study. Only two of the fifteen countries, Cameroon and Nigeria, had less than half of the households reporting women as their primary water collector at 45.8% and 46.6%, respectively.
Women and children generally have less physical capacity to carry heavy loads in contrast to adult men. A recent study suggested that children experience extreme pain from water collection activities, and the level of pain and fatigue may be determined by the distance they travel.
Only two of the fifteen countries, Cameroon and Nigeria, had less than half of the households reporting women as their primary water collector at 45.8% and 46.6%, respectively
Some children, however, expressed positive feelings about water collection chores because they can help their family meet basic needs, get exercise, and earn money by delivering water to households.
Water on Premises
There was also considerable heterogeneity of water-related characteristics among the rural and urban areas of the countries. In rural areas, the proportion of households lacking access to water on their premises was more than 90% in half of the countries (13 countries).
For urban areas, access to water on the household premises was higher–only two countries, Central African Republic (89%) and Liberia (85%) had more than 75% of households lacking water on household premises.
Fourteen countries had between 50% and 75% of households lacking water on their premises and eight had less than half of households without water on their premises. Typically, countries with low levels of household-level access to water in urban areas also had low coverage levels in rural areas.
Water collection by adult females
Across the 24 countries, adult females were predominantly responsible for water collection. In 10 countries, adult women were reported to be the primary collector of water in more than three-quarters of households across the country.
For each country, the prevalence of adult females as the primary collectors of water was generally similar across rural and urban areas, as well as for collection times greater or less than 30 minutes.
There were, however, six countries where the prevalence of women as the primary water collectors among all households without water on their premises differed by over twenty percentage points between urban and rural areas.
Women and children generally have less physical capacity to carry heavy loads in contrast to adult men. A recent study suggested that children experience extreme pain from water collection activities, and the level of pain and fatigue may be determined by the distance they travel
When reported water collection times were greater than 30 minutes, the proportion of adult females as the primary collectors was lower in both urban and rural settings of six countries and higher in six countries. Only 10 of the 24 countries had less than 100,000 households that reported an adult female is the primary water collector when water collection times were above 30 minutes.
There is a critical need to reduce the amount of time that women and children spend collecting water.
Water collection by children
The percentage of households where children were the primary collectors of water ranged from 4% in urban Zimbabwe to 44% in urban Niger. There was little change in this range when water collection took greater than 30 minutes.
For urban areas, there were four countries that had greater than 30% of water collection performed by children: Burundi (32%), Liberia (38%), Mali (44%), Niger (46%), and Sierra Leone (37%).
For rural areas, there were two countries that had more than 30% of water collection carried out by children: Burundi (36%) and Mali (31%).
There were two countries where more than one million households reported a child as the primary water collector when water collection times were above 30 minutes: Nigeria (1.0M) and Ethiopia (1.3M). Six of the 24 countries had more than 100,000 households that reported a child as the primary water collector when water collection times were above 30 minutes.
Conclusion
There is a critical need to reduce the amount of time that women and children spend collecting water. We suggest that accessibility to water, water collection by children, and gender ratios for water collection, especially when collection times are great, should be considered as key indicators for measuring progress in the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector. More work, however, is needed in order to test and potentially improve the validity of questions. For example, the number of trips a household makes per day should be added to national survey instruments to better determine water collection labor.
Longitudinal research studies would be useful to better characterize how improving access to water infrastructure affects households’ opportunity costs, as well as nutritional outcomes and other health outcomes, including road casualties and assaults.
Due to the limited research on water transport, current assessments made in the global burden of disease report do not include this as a risk factor in their analysis. If major investments are not made to address water collection labor, the problem could be heightened over time due to the increasing number of people predicted to live in areas with serious water shortages, many of whom are in sub-Saharan Africa.
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