Women and water resource management: Addressing gender inequity to realize Millennium Development Goals

Women and girls in traditional societies have been assigned the role and responsibility for identification and retrieval of water for household use. The WHO-UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation reported in 2008 that 13 percent of the world's population (884 million people), with the largest proportion living in Sub-Saharan Africa, currently consumes water from unimproved drinking water sources. The unimproved water sources are often at a distance from where women and girls reside. This results in their spending considerable length of time to reach and obtain water for their households. These daily activities, in turn, result in missed opportunities such as schooling and gainful employment. In addition, women experience adverse health events such as interpersonal violence. This paper, through an empirical analysis of available evidence from multiple sources, addresses three issues: i) the impact of gender inequity in water resource management on women and girls in developing nations; ii) the urgent need to address the gender inequity for realizing water and other related MDGs by 2015; and iii) proven strategies to empower women in water resource management in developing nations