Water scarcity isn’t entirely about the shortage of a resource.
It’s privilege, status and wealth that decide who gets water and who doesn’t, said the panelists at the session Does Water have a Gender?
“The water crisis is a socially mediated one.
It is a crisis of power — you have water that flows upwards to money,” said sociologist Lyla Mehta, who has worked on water issues in India and southern Africa.
Caste is a marker of who gets water in India, as are wealth and location.
“Women have an unfair burden of planning water supply for their families.
So, we need to involve them in planning of water policy and implementation for anything to change,” said WaterAid CEO VK Madhavan.
He explained that eight times out of 10, it is likely to be a woman or a girl child fetching water, which takes away time that could otherwise be spent on education or economic activity.
“Pictures of women carrying pots maybe beautiful, but it’s a crime, an outrage that women and girls are carrying 20 litres on their heads for kilometres every day,” she said.
Unless we price water, we won’t use it well,” said Madhavan.