Women and Water: Inequality in India

Nearly 40% of the world’s population lacks access to adequate sanitation systems.  In India alone, roughly 450,000 children under the age of five die each year from diseases contracted by drinking contaminated water.  Most of these deaths are due to enteric illnesses caused by bacteria, protozoans, and viruses in water that has been contaminated with human and animal feces.  Women and children bear the brunt of water-borne illnesses, due to social and cultural inequality.  Most societies rely on women and girls for the majority of water collection and household sanitation.  In rural India, some women walk for several hours a day to fetch water, which is used for cooking, cleaning, bathing, washing, care of animals, food production, and waste disposal. 

The implications from lack of clean water go beyond immediate health issues. With so much time spent for water collection, many girls are unable to attend school, and they are at risk for increased violence as they travel rural areas in search of water.  In addition, they may suffer from malnutrition, as the diseases they contract from contact with contaminated water can deplete the body of precious nutrients.

The Water Project is helping women and girls to overcome the barriers they face by providing access to clean water in schools and villages across India and Africa.  When women spend less time collecting water, they spend more time working on income-generating microenterprises, and girls are able to regularly attend school.

The start of a new semester

I am only one week into the Fall semester, and already I am in full swing!  My internship this semester is with The Water Project, and they have just kicked off a new portion of their website called My Water Project.  It is full of interesting articles and really shows you how you can make a difference.  With each action that you participate in, you receive impact points.  I feel like I haven't done anything substantial, and I already have 169 impact points (which puts me in the top 10!!).

Our group of interns is looking into developing a campus organization dedicated to clean water awareness, and we hope to be able to incorporate some of TWP's Water Challenge activities into our events.  It takes a lot more work than I realized to create a student organization.  Right now we are in the process of writing a constitution and finding students who might be interested in joining. 

The past few days have been filled with research on TWP, in addition to reading articles and researching topics that I will be writing articles on.  Two article topics are: Wastewater management and sanitation practices in rural and urban Africa, and India with a focus on gender inequality. 

I have so many ideas that it is hard to contain them all and keep focused on the internship tasks at hand.  I hope to make big strides this semester, honing my research skills, developing water education resources, getting my voice heard through articles and campus events, and mostly, helping to provide clean water to those who are most in need.

Lori Lewis's Fundraising Page on myWaterProject.