Women as water guardians in the home

Every day, women in Baringo County walk an estimated five kilometres to collect water for the home. Some walk up to 10 kilometres daily to get water for domestic use. 

“This takes them about 3-4 hours. The standard should be 0.5 km,” says Evans Kibet, a Program Officer at the Centre for Enhancing Democracy and Good Governance (CEDGG) which works closely with the residents of Baringo County. “Women and young girls take the lead in water collection as well as child care and other household chores. These are traditional gender roles assigned to women by society.”

But the situation faced by women in Baringo is not unique. In Kenya, women and children are generally responsible for domestic water collection and management. Women make choices about the water they collect.

Many women must decide between a water source that is distant providing higher quality water and one that is near but providing lower quality water. The amount of time women spend collecting water affects the amount of time they have for education and paid work. 

According to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey of 2014, 32.9% of the Kenyan population, the majority of them women and girls, travel 30 minutes or longer to get to a source of drinking water.

Additionally, UN Water reported that women and girls are responsible for water collection in eight out of ten households worldwide with water off-premises.

“Besides, recent observations have it that young men have abdicated their role of

managing livestock for emerging practices such as gaming and betting and getting into the boda boda business. This has increased the burden for women for collecting water to include water for livestock,” said Kibet.

Just like Miriam, the majority of residents of Baringo rely on rivers, unprotected springs, water pans and boreholes as sources of water. A few have adopted rainwater harvesting techniques while a few others (mainly in urban areas) have access to piped water. 

Women’s absence from Water Management Roles

Despite the fact that women are overwhelmingly in charge of collecting water for domestic use, they are totally absent from water management bodies that make decisions on where and how the water utilities and services will be implemented.

A growing body of evidence shows that water management services can increase effectiveness when women participate.

Gender inequality is one of the bottlenecks that span the entire spectrum of development, including the WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) sector.

While women have traditionally been the primary custodians of water collection in the rural areas of the developing world, they have consistently been excluded from entering the sector formally, except for the aspect of community mobilisation.

According to Bernadette Njoroge, the Director, Legal Services at the Water Services Regulatory Board (WASREB), the current situation of women in water management is “complicated”. “Women are supposed to apply to the position of director in these water services companies; in my experience, they do not. In the meetings which I have attended for the annual stakeholder conferences women are represented, but it differs from county to county. In some counties, women at mashinani level are not allowed to address men. So they cannot even become a director,” she said.

Her assessment is confirmed with a look at Kenya’s various water services companies. Water services were devolved to the county level in 2013. The counties then establish and monitor Water Service Providers (WSPs). Out of 70 WSPs surveyed, only 6 had female CEOs and only 5 of them had a female chairperson on their Board of Directors. 

Limuru Water and Sewerage Company Managing Director Margaret Maina is one of only 6 women who are CEOs in the more than 70 water service providers. She is also the longest-serving managing director of a water service provider in the country. “I’ve been in the sector for 13 years, and I can tell you it’s not easy to get to this position if you are a woman. It is a technical field and very few women have the technical skills to climb through the ranks. Instead, you will mostly find them in the HR or Administration departments,” she said.

WASREB’s Board of directors has only 3 women out of 10 members. This is fewer than the five women out of a 11 members who served on the board between 2006-2007.

Out of the 5 key management staff, there is 1 woman out of 5 members, which remains the same from 2006/7.

As part of the 2010 constitution, the National Gender and Equality Commission was set up with one of its mandates to monitor, facilitate and advise public institutions in ensuring they strictly observed gender equality principles at all levels of government.

Five years after the new constitution came into force, the commission decried the lack of women in decision-making levels of all government ministries and institutions.

The commission’s annual report for the year 2015-16 was considerable effort has been invested in the gender agenda in Kenya, there is a need for Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to target the female gender in the institutional senior management structure where most decisions are made.

Women managers face several barriers to climbing the corporate ladder in these WSPs. “Some women are unable to go to networking events that happen in the evenings where scouting for positions are done because they have gone home to be with their children so men are advantaged more,” said Eden Mati, Programme Officer at Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP).

“Women who take charge are also seen to be too aggressive or generally viewed in a negative light. There’s also the issue that some men still think that technical roles cannot be handled by women.” 

Other African countries are grappling with the same low numbers. The International Water Association surveyed a handful of countries in Africa in 2014 and found that Burkina Faso and South Africa are leading with 35% of women in their WASH sectors.

Mali, Niger and Tanzania lag behind with 12%, 10% and 15% respectively. The report showed that the percentage of women in the WASH workforce is 17% overall.

Bridging the Gap

Eng. Lucy Njambi, Technical Director Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (NCWSC) said during International Women’s Day that, “It’s important to include women, as they are the ones who suffer most. They are the ones looking for water, carrying it home. It’s important to consult them when rolling out services to ensure that the facilities are accessible and used.”

Under Eng. Njambi supervision, Nairobi Water also has taken steps to include more young women in technical positions.

Though there are more women working in the water sector, both technical and non-technical, there needs to be more done. “I would like to see more women given scholarships to study water and sanitation. And more sensitisation for women to take technical jobs, especially at artisan and non-graduate level,” she said.

“There’s a gap in mentorship,” said Eden. She names Eng. Njambi as one of her mentors. “Women who have done technical courses in ICT, Engineering and such courses are not empowered to go for these positions. At times it could be having a family at the top of one’s mind rather than career goals or it could be the fact that it’s a male-dominated field,” she said.

Other than improved water services to the community, other aspects of women’s lives are affected when they miss out on management boards. “Because women in Baringo spend a good deal of time in search of water, she can hardly find time to engage in productive work like running a small business and thus she remains dependent on the man. Strategic needs such as running for political office remains an uphill task. Dependency on the man also increases her vulnerability to gender-based violence,” said Evans of CEDGG.

Not only do women expose themselves to the risks of gender-based violence, but they also expose themselves to risks of sexual assault by walking in remote locations after dark.

Value of Women Water Managers

“My experience with water service providers that have been led by women have been positive; they tend to do more with very little,” said Bernadette. WASREB is a state corporation whose mandate is to oversee the implementation of policies and strategies relating to the provision of water and sewerage services and she interacts with several of the WSPs in the country.

UNDP research on 44 water projects across Asia and Africa shows that when both men and women engage in shaping water policies and institutions, communities use water services more and sustain them for longer.

“I can tell you that there is a true difference when women are in management positions within the water sector,” said Limuru Water MD, Margaret Maina. “A good example of this effect is when Martha Karua held the position of Minister of Water Resources Management and Development. She was behind the implementation of the Water Act 2002, which led to better access to clean water in homes across the country,” she said.

Eden says that women who start their careers from going into the field to work with communities tend to talk to the women more instead of the men because they understand that she is the one who faces the challenges when it comes to water collection. “When these women become managers, they are then more effective with decision making because they are more empathetic than a man is. Women are also more geared towards creating projects that are geared towards making women’s water collection easier,” she said.

What can be done

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency advises that in order to mainstream gender in water management, we need to support the collection of sex-disaggregated information about WASH behaviour to help the private sector and development agencies to communicate more effectively, and to influence the adoption of safe sanitation and hygiene practices.

Evans reports that harsh climatic conditions characterized by prolonged periods of drought buttressed by lack of the absence of water harvesting and preservation mechanisms make the water situation worse at the county level.

This means the distances may become longer in the search for water, especially for women in rural areas.

Very little research has been done in recent years to address the correlation between hiring more women in water management boards and improved water services in communities.

Increasing the research might help push to light the benefits of having more women involved in water projects both at the community level and at the higher level where key decisions are made.

“Sensitization on gender roles and encourage men to take part in water collection at the household level also wouldn’t hurt,” said Evans. 

This story was developed in Partnership with Code for Africa’s WanaData Program.

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