Give Women a Voice in Water Governance

By: Jessica Hernandez and Alexia Karpen

Imagine you live in a rural area, a space free of air, water, soil, and noise pollution. Suddenly, a mining company settles near to your peaceful home and after a while, it leaves behind a muddy landscape, an earth-filled embankment that stores sand, chemical reagents, rocks, water, among others. In other words, it stores mining waste that threatens every day to poison the soils and waterways. That is a tailings dam.

Gender roles play a significant role in restricting women's access to the public sphere, making the conversation on water security inherently one on gender equality, or lack thereof. Women have the distinct responsibility for water, sanitation, and hygiene both within the household and in community activities at large such as the use of water-based indigenous technologies for agriculture. "In their efforts to get water for their families, they often face an impossible choice - certain death without water or possible death due to illness from dirty water." However, while women are the main facilitators of water activities, they have little to no authority in water governance - that needs to change immediately.

"With a total population of 32 million, 2.5 million people lack access to an improved water source and five million lack access to improved sanitation." Remote and indigenous communities have no access to piped or treated drinking water or safe human waste disposal. Peru's growing mining industry and extreme vulnerability to climate change have exacerbated this water crisis. Mining poses an extremely high risk to water in Peru. While mining processes only use about 5% of water, this statistic obscures the reality of civilian access to water in country and the significance of the mining industry's water usage on community sources. For example, tailings dams - the embankments of leftover mining waste - slowly leak toxic waste that poison the water supply and surrounding environment.

Water governance has developed over the years, establishing itself in the form of sophisticated, patriarchal government institutions. Unfortunately, while women represent more than 50% of Peru's population, they hold little power in conversations about the water crisis. Currently, women make up ~15% of water utility employees in Peru, 7% of executive-level positions in water user groups and only 6% of general managers in water utilities. The gender gap in decision-making is attributed to the disparities in land ownership in Peru, as holding water rights and participating in water user groups are directly contingent upon land ownership, which women do not traditionally have. Given that women only hold about 22% of the country's agricultural land titles, the disparity in land ownership is inevitably reflected in women's employment in the sector.

"Women around the world spend a collective 266 million hours finding and collecting water." Besides employment in water governance, the disproportionate effect of the water crisis on the time, health, and wellbeing of women and young girls can keep them from school, maintaining employment, and increases risk for short and long-term physical injury or debilitation, as accessing water often times means carrying heavy loads over long distances.

The water crisis touches every aspect of Peruvian women's lives. As Peru continues to grow its mining industry, the government needs to be mindful about how mining will increase risks to water for the greater population, but in particular to women. In order to fully understand the effects of the industry on water and the Peruvian people, it is imperative that women not only become a part of this conversation, but are also given the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process of water governance. If not, we will continue to create policy disproportionate to the size of the problem.