But there are significant gender differences in the use, access to and management of water. Women often have little or no water rights, and form the highest proportion of people without access to safe drinking water.
The consequences of this are well documented as the burden of collecting water detracts from productivity, access to education and makes women and girls the most vulnerable to water borne diseases that thrive in unsafe water sources.
While some progress has been made towards halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015, the decisions pertaining to water use and allocation continue to be dominated by men. Unless these traditional roles and decision making patterns are shifted, women will continue to have their efforts to achieve economic growth and independence, undermined.
Dr. Barbara van Koppen, principal researcher on poverty, gender and water with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), says despite the role of women in supporting households and communities, the patterns of inequality that continually see them excluded from decision making persists.
Eiman Karar from the Water Research Commission (WRC) states that the struggles for equal rights for women and men is not unique to South Africa and is not a recent phenomenon. "It can be traced in all societies and over a period of many years and even centuries. The issue of women's rights and women's position in society has also come to be a part of the post-World War II discourse of development, even for this, a number of approaches exist."
The theme of the conference, Gender and Development (GAD), is the approach to gender which argues that the gendered division of labour assigns women to inferior roles and that in order to analyse the situation of women, men must be part of the equation since they are part of the social construct of gender.
The GAD approach links production to reproduction and maintains that in order to change socially constructed relationships that determine one's place in society, a concerted effort must be made by both men and women. The GAD approach has radically shifted the discourse of development towards mainstreaming. Mainstreaming is a useful state approach to dealing with gender inequality".
Already 40% of the world's population live in conditions of water stress. As competition for water increases, we can expect to see increasing conflict exacerbated by water scarcity, water pollution, climate induced change that are already producing extreme and severe weather events such as floods and droughts. Water conflicts are already affecting safe access to sustainable water resources and women, children and the elderly remain the most vulnerable.
Women have a critical role to play in social and economic development, but in order to support them in reaching their full potential, we need to advance the debate in gender mainstreaming that will ultimately lead to gender equality.
The Water Research Commission of South Africa, in partnership with the Department of Water Affairs of South Africa, AMCOW, SADC and the Women for Water Partnership will also address this topic and several others during the Gender and Development conference to be held in East London from 7 - 14 July.
