Credit: UN Women/Narendra Shrestha

By Lina Taing and Grace Oluwasanya
HAMILTON, Ontario, Mar 7 2022 (IPS)

UN Women estimates 150 million women and girls are emerging from poverty by 2030, thanks largely to comprehensive education, labor, and social protection strategies and reforms implemented by governments around the world.

Celebration of this anticipated Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) progress is tempered, however, by the realization that a majority — roughly two-thirds — of the 435 million women and girls experiencing extreme poverty will likely be left behind.

The impact of gender inequality has severe costs and consequences for entire societies. Women and girls in 80% of households without on-premises drinking water access miss out on innumerable economic and educational opportunities due to daily water collection responsibilities.

Women also are underrepresented in leadership and decision-making roles despite making up nearly half of the world’s population. Moreover, lifetime earnings of women could increase by more than half – that is, US $24,586 per person or $170 trillion globally – if women earned as much as men.

This year’s International Women’s Day, celebrated since 1911, aims to further raise awareness of and break the bias that perpetuates gender inequality in the 21st century.

This bias continues despite gender mainstreaming and other public policy measures that unequivocally affirm the equal rights of women and men and officially integrate gendered perspectives in legislation, research, resource allocation, and project management and monitoring.

Farmers in Laikipia County constructing vertical gardens – a climate smart approach that reduces labour input, creates diversity in crops and increases water preservation. Credit: UN Women/James Ochweri

In the water sector, blind spots pose a particular barrier to progress.

Blind spots due to limited data, discriminatory structural and systemic violations such as stereotypes and norms, need to be urgently addressed.

Even within the SDGs there are blind spots: none of the 11 indicators for SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation) are related to gender, for example.

While “paying special attention to the needs of women and girls” is descriptively highlighted in Target 6.2 (adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene), all of SDG 6’s indicators are actually gender-blind as data such as the proportion of women and girls accessing safe services or involved in decision-making are not monitored.

The water sector needs to collect gender-disaggregated data measuring women’s ability to meet their water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) needs, access resources, and exercise agency if it is to develop evidence-based gender equality policies and interventions.

The water sector can draw from the SDG Agenda’s 53 gender-specific indicators, a recent review on gender-related WASH measures and quantitative measures of social change informed by a feminist perspective to build gender-specific monitoring system at programmatic, national and global scales.

Meanwhile, less than half of 109 countries reporting on gender mainstreaming in water laws and policies specifically mention women’s participation in resource management and rural sanitation.

And in places where women’s equality seems most advanced, some of the women that managed to get a seat at the table have complained of their participation being tokenistic in both community and government structures.

When women’s perspectives are not incorporated in policies and the construction and location of supposedly gender-neutral water infrastructure, resulting interventions can actually constrain women’s economic and educational opportunities.

Women also can feel insecure with having to use services that put their personal safety at risk, as well as not meet their basic menstrual hygiene disposal and personal cleansing needs.

Meaningful and substantial women’s empowerment efforts and representation are critical to ensure that current systems are transformed to tackle the harmful roots of inequality in the water sector. The causes of these violations need to be uprooted if everlasting change is to be achieved.

Outdated stereotypes and social norms – such as women being steered to traditional caregiving domestic and professional roles – are at the root of gender bias and barriers in the water sector.

Additionally, socio-institutional expectations and patriarchal practices limit many women’s ability to reconcile the time and energy committed to caregiving and work.

Consequently, women are overrepresented in unpaid work roles (including water carriage) and underrepresented in industrial leadership or decision-making roles.

While sectoral interventions have targeted gender imbalances in domestic roles and decision-making, gender mainstreaming in the workplace continues to be an uphill struggle.

Globally, less than one in five water sector workers are women, with underrepresentation in both technical and managerial positions.

To break this institutional barrier, the World Bank advises addressing salary inequities by assessing gender pay gaps for equivalent work, offering staff training opportunities informed by a gender lens, and adopting a four-pronged approach that attracts, recruits, retains and offers career advancement opportunities for the next generation of female water leaders.

The realization of gender equality is a key component of the global development agenda, and essential if the water sector is to contribute to the achievement of SDGs 1 (no poverty), 5 (gender equality), 6 (clean water and sanitation), and 10 (reduced inequalities).

Putting gender-disaggregated data measures, supportive legal and physical infrastructure, and inclusive social systems and institutions in place can help #breakthebias by overcoming gender blind spots that perpetuate harmful and inequitable divisions of control, power, and labor.

Lina Taing is the Water and Health research lead, and Grace Oluwasanya is a Water, Gender and Climate Change research lead at the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), a Canadian-based think tank supported by the Government of Canada and hosted at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

By Lina Taing and Rachel Kaiser
HAMILTON, Canada, Nov 23 2021 (IPS)

The overuse and misuse of antimicrobial medicines and chemicals has become the main driver of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and drug-resistant infections that threaten human health and the global economy.

Given that development, the UN designated November 18-24 as World Antimicrobial Awareness Week, to remind us all to handle antimicrobials with greater care.

Antimicrobials – which range from antibiotic and antiviral medicines to disinfectant and antiseptic chemicals – help prevent or treat human, animal and plant infections and have contributed immensely to health and progress worldwide.

Now, however, common antibiotics, as well as first-line antimicrobials for infectious diseases such as HIV and malaria, are becoming less effective.

The World Health Organization reports that 700,000 people die from drug-resistant diseases every year. If this threat continues unchecked, 10 million people are predicted to die every year and the world will lose USD $100 trillion by 2050.

Most worrying, an estimated 90% of the world’s urban growth is anticipated in Africa and Asia, where populations are most vulnerable to drug-resistant bacteria. Increasingly, multilateral organizations and national governments are adopting measures to reduce unnecessary antimicrobial use by humans, including in our food chain.

From 2000 to 2015, human consumption of antibiotics increased 65%, led by low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where GDP has risen in parallel with antibiotic use, overuse and misuse.

Meanwhile, antimicrobial use in animal farming is nearly triple that of human consumption and is on track to reach 200,235 tons in animals and 13,600 tons in aquaculture by 2030 as producers work to reduce infection and increase animal growth.

Data on antimicrobial use in plants is limited, but the presence of resistant bacteria has been detected on 25% of plant-based foods from all world regions, indicating that food likely is contributing to greater AMR.

The excessive use of antimicrobials in humans, animals, and plants also puts environmental health at risk. But environmental transmission via soil, air, or water receives relatively little attention as an AMR driver.

Depending on the drug, humans and animals can excrete waste with up to 90% of antimicrobial compounds or metabolites still active, which can end up untreated in the environment.

Unsafe disposal of antimicrobials and wastewater from hospitals, pharmaceutical manufacturers, municipal treatment plants, and farms are recognized as hotspots for the introduction and evolution of more resistant strains (i.e., superbugs).

This pollution can consequently compound human AMR exposure through contaminated soils and water supplies that sustain our environment, or are used to produce food, for drinking, cleansing and recreation.

Increasing access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and raising capacity for wastewater treatment are the primary environmental interventions to reduce the spread of AMR.

However, current statistics paint an alarming picture of whether these efforts are enough to address environmental risks, as a quarter of humanity does not have access to safe water and just over half of the world’s wastewater is treated. Of particular concern are large swathes of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, which report limited treatment of, or have no data on, domestic and industrial wastewater flows.

At current rates of progress, universal WASH and wastewater treatment is unlikely to be achieved soon, which highlights the need to put into place now additional measures that protect environmental waters from these AMR exposure pathways.

Environmental waters are aquatic environments that can function as both AMR reservoirs and pathways and their protection, therefore, is critical in AMR stewardship. Environmental waters refers to the world’s diverse natural and man-made water bodies, ranging from wetlands that shelter wildlife and nurture local ecosystems, to groundwater and surface waters from which we draw supplies or discharge wastewater into.

One could argue that environmental water AMR protection is inherent in measures that reduce antimicrobial use upstream, and enhance WASH and municipal and industrial wastewater treatment strategies downstream.

But wastewater treatment from a major contributor to environmental pollution – agriculture – tends to be overlooked, despite the facts that this industry uses the largest amount of antimicrobials, 70% of global freshwater, and discharges the majority of its wastewater and runoff untreated into the environment.

The combination of poor WASH coverage and inadequate domestic, industrial, and agricultural wastewater treatment puts half a billion people that rely on unimproved water from polluted environmental waters at greater risk of AMR exposure and infection.

Safeguarding environmental waters represents a major void in current AMR stewardship efforts, despite water protection being recognized in 2018 as the “first step” to reducing environmental AMR pollution.

The UN should support surveillance, regulation and enforcement of water and land protection legislation and development of AMR-related water quality standards – to prevent and mitigate environmental AMR risks, as well as equitably address human, animal, and environmental AMR threats.

Lina Taing is a Water and Health Researcher, and Rachel Kaiser is an Intern at the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), a Canadian-based think tank supported by the Government of Canada and hosted at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. The Institute marks its 25th anniversary in 2021.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau