Water and women: Water security, conflict and its gendered impact

I am in conversation with Ayushi Trivedi a Gender and Social Equity Research Analyst at the World Resources Institute in Washington DC. Her research at WRI has focused on women’s role in natural resource management, gender and social equity as a solution to improved sustainability and promoting inclusive and equitable climate action. The topic we’re looking at this week is water. An essential resource that industries, energy production, our food systems depend on. It’s vital for sanitation, hygiene and access to clean, drinking water is a basic human right. Yet more than a billion people currently live in water-scarce regions and as many as 3.5 billion could experience water scarcity by 2025. Water scarcity affects women in particular who are responsible for domestic chores of cooking, cleaning, caretaking globally and are doubly affected when you take into account their employment in agriculture. Water can be used as a weapon of conflict, it can be a ground for war against governments and people and it can cause mass migration of populations. Of course climate change will only exacerbate issues of water availability which in turn affects gender equality, public health and a whole host of other issues. In this episode we’ll be looking at what water security is, how it affects women, Day Zero in Chennai in 2019 and grassroots initiatives of water management that policymakers can learn from. The link to the report we talk about in the episode is free to read: https://www.wri.org/publication/ending-conflicts-over-water. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn, subscribe to us via your podcast provider and share our episode on social media.