Hey have you ever took a second to just be thankful you have access to water? It’s crazy that not having water could kill you. In what ways are women in the Global south affected by environmental degradation? This quote from :
https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/gender/
states:
“Without safe drinking water, adequate sanitation and hygiene facilities at home and in places of work and education, it is disproportionately harder for women and girls to lead safe, productive, healthy lives”
Women have periods for christ sake, how can you not understand that feeling? Water needs to be safe. Whenever you go to the doctors office what is one common thing the doctor would be telling everyone? “Drink more water, Drink “x” amount of water from now on”. Water is essential to everyday life. Especiailly when it comes to hygiene. Without water, or in better terms without clean water the quick epidemic of disease will soon rise. Their are many people who hate to even drink water but how would they feel if water wasn’t available to them? Would it change their perspective? Of course it would, especially women. Not being able to bathe, clean wounds, hydrate their bodies places them in a difficult place that noone should even have to experience better yet a woman.
In the picture below their are african girls who have to go and collect water from miles away from their actual homes. All this is done through walking, just to reach some type of water to begin with. It’s been said that many african girls who have to do this lead them to easier access to be abused, drop out of school, and disease. The journey to get water and come back isn’t always safe, but to keep them balanced and semi-healthy if you will this is what has to be done. The image is powerful and hurts me to the core, its unfair all I have to do is jump in my car and head to the nearest convenience store. While researching and reading I found a blog/article that I believe will help you to better understand:
https://www.santabanta.com/newsmaker/5440/over-17-million-women-and-girls-collect-water-in-africa-at-risk-of-rape-and-disease/
The picture I posted below is from this website.
BINA AGARWAL
In her chapter of Feminist Studies; The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India, she states that “(2)In patriarchal thought women are identified as being closer to nature in men as being culture, nature is seen as inferior to culture as women are seen as inferior to men”(Agarwal, 120). Tell us something we didn’t know? Backtrack a bit she argues that women who live in poverty are more prone to “environmental degradation in quite gender-specific ways.” (Agarwal, 119) If we look at what I said before reasons are; hygiene, abuse, and/or disease. In another section she goes on to talk more about how women are everywhere when nature is mentioned but men are more cultural then nature. Agarwall states the debate between women, and men has a divide one that the root is based off of gender. “Such as through the work women and men do in the gender division of property and power”(Agarwal,123) Society brings men up as policemen, as military, as stallions. Women are housewives, nurses, and ‘chicks’. The women is always pushed into a job/or social construct that she has to be a ‘caregiver’ or ‘caretaker’ just because someone can breathe life into this earth doesn’t mean that they are capable of giving that nature/nurture. Agarwals perspective does a 180 on the western perspective, through the western perspective it states that women are inferior to men due to the relations with nature and etc.. Agarwal presents that anything women/nonhuman are inferior to men. Not just nature and women. it stems from different ideological ties.
From my perspective I believe I appreciate Agarwal more then the other past readings we’ve read. She connects herself as a women to her essay and I appreciate it more from that position. When reading Warren or Hobgood I felt as if I was just reading and understanding a perspective, while reading Agarwal I could understand more about women and nature being connected. She brought a different perspective from the basic western one I have seen and have continued to see.
xoxo Gossip Girl.
PS: WOMEN AND NATURE BOTH NEED WATER. NEVER FORGET THAT WHEN YOU WASTE YOUR WATER!