Understanding the Water Access and Waterborne diseases vulnerability of women in the context of gender biased social norms

In developed countries, people have piped water supply systems in their households, whereas people from most of the developing and underdeveloped countries still wait in long queues to collect water from common water sources or fetch water from distant places. Irrespective of occupations, in most countries, women are responsible for collecting water as they are the primary caregivers of the families as per gender roles. Young girls drop out of school or cannot attend school as they need to spend hours collecting water. In Indias Maharashtra state, a custom called Water wives is practiced, where men can have more than one wife just for collecting water. Its advantageous to all as the second or third wives are widows in most cases and gain social status after getting remarried as water wives. Data availability is as difficult as getting safe water and sanitation facilities, whereas Earth Observations (EO) offer to fill in some of those gaps by using proxy indicators. Lack of safe water access can hamper womens physical health, for example, relying on pregnant women to collect water for the whole family adds risks to the pregnancy, as it requires carrying heavy loads of water. Water scarcity also causes a high risk of having waterborne diseases with inadequate personal hygiene practices. Collecting water from long queues has decreased womens working hours, thus income, which reduces the chance of getting proper sanitation and nutritious foods and makes them vulnerable to malnutrition and diseases. COVID-19 has made this situation much worse. Using gender biased social norms and gender discrimination as a backdrop, the objectives of this study are to highlights the (i) discrimination females face for water access in water-scarce regions, (ii) womens waterborne disease vulnerability, and (iii) leveraging EO for better understanding water and sanitation stakes.