Gendered Rural Household Water - A Cultural Study

Fresh water is almost exclusively used for agriculture, while rural households require small amounts. Many regions have an annual rainfall of 1 000 mm that provides an average of some 20 litres daily from a roof area of 7 m2 given that it can be stored. Bridging the seasonal gap requires some kind of measure to be taken. Household water conditions may thus be described as ‘enough water most of the year’ or ‘water scarcity for part of the year’. The paper looks into remedies of this gap from an inter-disciplinary perspective carried out in a semi-arid area in Tanzania south-east of Lake Victoria. Physical features such as rainfall pattern, geology, access to material, economy as well as residents’ knowledge and skills all play a role. Yet, gendered roles and expectations seem to play a decisive role when it comes to taking action. The focus of the interviews and observations is on residents’ perceptions, knowledge and resources to enhance provision of water on their own. The finding is that knowledge, skills and access to physical resources are available in the villages to perform improvements, while existing gendered norms and individual perceptions are less conducive to taking action. The complex of norms may be conflicting and household seem to be harmony-rational rather than time- or cost rational. The family consists of not one but two competing entities with separate rationality: the husband’s unit responsible for improving water sources and means of transport, and the wife’s unit responsible for fetching the water. The two activities are closely interlinked, and rather small and inexpensive improvement measures could result in a long-lasting reduction of the time spent to fetch water or reduced incidence of diarrhoea in children. However, changes may come with a negative price of e.g. fewer social encounters. Making the household or local community more responsible for the provision of water would require adjustments of gendered norms without challenging the positive impacts of adjacent norms.