Gendered water spaces: a study of the transition from wells to handpumps in Mozambique

Abstract

In many parts of rural Africa, women and children spend a lot of time collecting water. In the development literature, the water collection task is portrayed as oppressive, arduous, and disliked by women. Eliminating this activity from women's lives is believed to empower them, yet there has been little research investigating what actually happens at the water source or how women themselves perceive the time spent there. This research is based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork in five rural communities in the northern province of Nampula, Mozambique. Over this year, handpumps were constructed in communities where people previously collected water from distant shallow wells and rivers. This article compares the social interactions and activities between the customary water sites and the handpump through the lens of gendered space. The customary water sites are controlled by women and highly valued for their social attributes. While clean water is more accessible at the handpumps, men often regulate access to the technology and social activities are limited. This article contributes to feminist geography and political ecology by showing how differences in the materiality of water spaces interact with local norms to shape social interactions and gendered subjectivities, and how, in turn, men and women contribute to the production and meaning of these spaces. I argue that the handpumps open up new spaces for men and women to negotiate gender roles and (re)define their associations with modernity and development.

Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Approaches: Anthropological Contributions and Future Directions for Engineering

“…Moreover, what constitutes security is similarly culturally specific, for example, water is understood as a resource, as a human right, as an integral part of the cultural landscape (see discussions in Goodale [2009]; Cairns [2018b]), that is, water as medicine (Wilson, 2019 ). Social theorists posit that technology stems from culture, but also changes it, for example, the implementation and use of handpumps in Mozambique was influenced by culture and, in turn, shaped social relations, specifically gender (Van Houweling, 2015 ). Indeed, we cannot assume technology is universally experienced.…”

Water, Sanitation, and Women’s Empowerment: A systematic review and qualitative metasynthesis

“…Women and girls feared, risked, or experienced, varied harms related to their water and sanitation circumstances and activities. 48,49,64,76,87,121,127,129,130,144,[154][155][156][158][159][160][163][164][165]167,168,170,172,173,[175][176][177][183][184][185]187,200,212,217,230,243,244,247,262,263,282 Many noted exacerbated experiences for women who were pregnant or elderly, had pre-existing conditions, and/or perform activities in harsh weather. 121,129,130,155,160,163,165,…”

“…In Mozambique, newly constructed handpumps provided women with easier, more reliable water access, but made achieving privacy for bathing and menstrual hygiene more difficult than at sources like rivers. 247 Sanitation facilities often enable privacy. In India, women with latrines reported a greater sense of privacy, 125 and adolescent girls and women found latrines particularly useful for maintaining privacy during menstruation and defecation, especially during the rainy season.…”

Co-opting cattle spaces: Women, cattle, and empowerment in Northwestern Botswana

“…While neither Harris nor Sultana explicitly refers to empowerment, they nevertheless engage with space, subjectivities, and gendered power and access. These approaches reveal how the socially constructed nature of gender is reinforced through, and subsequently reinforces, struggles over resources or interactions with the environment (see also Hawkins et al., 2011; Hovorka, 2012; Nightingale, 2006, 2011; Rocheleau, 2008; Van Houweling, 2015, 2016).…”

“…Feminist geographers and feminist political ecologists can complement existing scholarship by addressing the missing spatial component of empowerment conceptualizations and illuminating human–environment relations of power. Here, the spatial embeddedness of power is understood by examining the ways that subjectivities – individual engagement with dominant ideologies – are produced through repetition of embodied practices and material actions (Elmhirst, 2011; Harris, 2006; Hovorka, 2012; Kesby, 2005; Nightingale, 2006, 2011; Sultana, 2009; Van Houweling, 2015, 2016). Socio-spatial emphasis is applicable in the gender, empowerment, and development context because the spaces in which subjectivities emerge have reciprocal relationships with these subjectivities (Koskela, 2005; Longhurst, 2003; Massey, 1994; Probyn, 2003; Secor, 2002).…”