Why clean water is a women’s issue

The Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6 or Global Goal 6) declares the importance of achieving ‘Clean water and sanitation for all’.

It is one of the 17 SDGs established by the United Nations General Assembly to succeed the former Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Without safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services, women and girls seem to be more vulnerable to abuse, attack, and illness, limiting their ability to study, work and live in dignity.

Improvements to WASH at home, school, work, and in public places promote gender equity. Women and girls must play a central role in developing and implementing solutions that address their specific needs.

In many areas, women and girls are usually responsible for fetching water. This can be a hazardous, time-consuming and physically exhausting task. Long walks, often multiple times per day, can expose women and girls to attack and prevent them from attending school or earning a living. Personal safety is paramount for women and girls when it comes to sanitation. Having to use toilet facilities outside or sharing facilities with men and boys puts women and girls at greater risk of abuse and assault.

Women and girls have specific hygiene requirements. They require a clean, functional, lockable, gender-segregated space with access to sanitary products and disposal systems in order to manage their personal hygiene.

The lack of safe drinking water and sanitation is an equality issue. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene facilities. However, their voices and needs are frequently ignored in the design and implementation of improvements, ensuring their ongoing marginalisation.

By failing women and girls, we jeopardise the 2030 Agenda. Access to water and sanitation are fundamental human rights. When women are denied those rights, their health suffers significantly, limiting their educational and economic opportunities and denying them their full participation in society.

Due to traditions of patriarchy and gender inequality, women in developing countries such as Pakistan are especially vulnerable to climatic calamities. The grave consequences of climate change are becoming undeniable and more concerning within the past decade. It is crucial to highlight the predicament of the most vulnerable and marginalised community members — women and children — and include them in crucial decision-making discussions when a nation or community is struck by a natural disaster of such epic proportions. In the event of a calamity, women and children are 14 times more likely to lose their lives than men.

According to reports, women made up 70 per cent of the 230,000 fatalities from the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Due to ingrained gender disparities that shape the moral and social fabric of their communities, women in developing countries such as Pakistan are more susceptible to the effects of climate disasters.

Women in Pakistan continue to face challenges, whether it be in the form of a lack of economic empowerment or significant leadership positions in the community. In light of this, natural disasters such as floods will exacerbate already-existing gender disparities by compounding the suffering of millions of women and young girls who are continuously fighting for their rights to proper economic, health and educational opportunities in a society that is dominated by men.

Given the general limitations on women’s mobility and education, particularly in Pakistan’s rural areas, evacuation can be difficult because women lack basic life-saving skills such as swimming, navigation and self-defence techniques. Due to the conservative and patriarchal nature of most rural households in Pakistan, women are also frequently prohibited from leaving their homes without a male companion or permission from tribal elders, resulting in limited outside exposure. They are also primary caregivers at home, which may further limit their ability to evacuate.

Biased social attitudes and archaic traditions thus contribute to the disproportionate impact of climate-related disasters on women, who are displaced or killed in the process.

Women’s roles and contributions to the informal sector and agriculture are not given enough policy-level attention or economic importance in the country, so when apocalyptic floods destroy crops and fields, women’s employment is severely impacted, and unlike their male counterparts, women lack the resources or receive adequate assistance to find alternative means of livelihood.

The floods of 2022 affected approximately thirty-three million people. More than two million houses were damaged, displacing approximately eight million people and placing 600,000 in relief camps. Approximately, 8.2 million women and 16 million children were most severely affected.

Women face challenges long after a disaster, as many women and young girls are vulnerable to gender-based violence even in flood relief camps and shelter homes. There is also great concern about women’s hygiene and sanitation needs; these shelter homes are frequently unsanitary and lack proper lavatories, clean water, and food supplies.

The extremely consequential levels of humanitarian, infrastructure and economic destruction experienced are colossal, making it nearly impossible to accurately quantify the losses at this point. As the Pakistani government and international agencies work to assist flood victims and build greater climate resilience in the future, they must consider women’s roles and needs. Women are critical to the development of better climate adaptation mechanisms and disaster risk resilience efforts because they bring distinct perspectives, insights and challenges to the table that must be recognised and incorporated into future policymaking.

Government-led disaster management entities and civil society organisations (CSOs) should place a greater emphasis on gender-specific disaster communication methods, climate education, and training opportunities, particularly in underserved areas, to ensure that women are aware of and fully equipped with climate knowledge.

Involving women in key decision-making processes within communities, recognising them as important stakeholders, and empowering them with climate-risk resilience skills and knowledge will elevate them. Women and girls’ needs must be addressed through policies and action plans that involve them in service planning, decision-making, and governance.

Gender-responsive WASH is critical to achieving the 2030 Agenda. Gender equity must be embedded in all levels of policy to achieve water and sanitation for all, which will help advance many other aspects of the SDG agenda, particularly poverty reduction, health, education and employment.

WASH is essential for eliminating violence against women and girls. Female safety and dignity must take precedence in WASH service design; addressing gender imbalances in WASH governance and management at all levels will also ensure service suitability and elevate the status of women in society.