Water fetching burden: a qualitative study to examine how it differs by gender among rural households in the west region of Cameroon

Water fetching and musculoskeletal health across the life-course in Sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review

The world is experiencing a global water crisis and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is expected to be a hotspot for increasing global water scarcity in years to come. Water is quintessentially a gendered issue; indeed, sociocultural norms hold women responsible for household water collection, requiring them to travel far distances while carrying water. This paper reports the findings of a scoping review of peer-reviewed and grey literature that examines the relationship between water fetching and the musculoskeletal (MSK) health of women in SSA. The work is informed by a gendered life-course perspective, and the authors follow the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Results indicate a bidirectional relationship between water fetching and poor MSK health as chronic and acute incidences of water carrying are highly related to MSK pain and dysfunction. This has negative implications for the overall health and wellbeing of women and their households. Gaps in the literature are identified, including the experiences of elderly people and people with various vulnerabilities. Recommendations from the literature are compiled to outline potential avenues of future research and innovation to better support the MSK health of water fetchers in SSA.

Men's household water fetching in India: Gender inequity is associated with greater responsibility and related risks

INTRODUCTION

Household water fetching elevates physical and emotional harms, and these are generally assumed to accrue to women due to gendered labor assignments. But even in cases like India where fetching remains a highly feminized task, there are households where the primary responsibility is assumed by men.

METHODS

We test the proposition that men's responsibility for water fetching is predicted by greater gender equity, reflected in measures of wives' empowerment. We used an extremely large, nationally representative Demographic and Health Survey dataset from India (2019-2020), narrowed to only households in which spouses co-reside with off-plot water sources (N = 10 616), and applying a multinomial regression approach.

RESULTS

In >20% of households, men are the primary fetchers. They are more likely to have primary responsibility when water is more distant, privately purchased, or transported by vehicle. Contrary to predictions, men assume greater responsibility for household water fetching as their wives' empowerment measures decrease and when they want to control their movement.

CONCLUSION

Married men in India sometimes assume responsibility for water fetching, but this is not explained by greater household gender equity. The findings also suggest that when men are responsible for fetching they have heightened risk of some forms of physical trauma but less relative psychological harm. Detailing why men fetch water matters for identifying and mitigating the physical and emotion harms of bearing responsibility for water labor, with implications for how gender should be conceptualized in water interventions intending to improve health and well-being.