It ’s Simple, but Requires Determination

Women are responsible for providing water for their families. Many spend hours travelling to the wells and back home every day, carrying heavy clay pots on their heads. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPSBy Monika Weber-FahrSTOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 18 2019 (IPS) I am drafting this on International Women’s Day – March 8 – with an eye towards World Water Day on March 22. On International Women’s Day we celebrate progress in gender equality. At the same time, we recognize how much remains to be done: how many women remain excluded from decision-making across many professions. Changing this is urgent. Water – clean and accessible – is getting scarcer at an alarming rate. While working to change this, we cannot afford to exclude women. The water community has made political statements on gender equality, going back to 1992 when the Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development included Principle #3, affirming that “Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water.” Was this merely lip service? A developing world woman carry a jug of water on her head remains a stubborn image of women and water. To be sure, this image points to a daily tragedy: the fact that hundreds of millions of people do not have a convenient source of water, and that women and girls spend hours each day collecting water, losing productive time and opportunities, and living in fear for their safety. Like others, Global Water Partnership (GWP) commends the peopl...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Combating Desertification and Drought Development & Aid Economy & Trade Featured Food & Agriculture Gender Global Green Economy Headlines Health Human Rights Labour Poverty & SDGs TerraViva United Nations Water & Sanitation W Source Type: news