Female Water Fetchers: Analyzing the Role of Women in Collecting Drinking Water in India

Background and ObjectiveIn 2011, nearly half of the households in India had not accessed drinking water sources in their household premises. In this context, the question arises: who is playing an important role (a male or female household member) in fetching drinking water in those households where the availability of drinking water is inadequate? Is there any gender difference in this practice? Against this backdrop, the study aims to outline the proportion of households from various sociodemographic, economic, and regional backgrounds where women are playing the main role of collecting water. The study also focuses on identifying the backgrounds determining the role of women as household water collectors in India.MethodologyWe used the 69th round of NSS (National Sample Survey 2012) data for this study. We employed the chi-square test to access the heterogeneity in the proportion of households where women are responsible for water collection among different sociodemographic, community-level, and regional backgrounds. Besides, we used a binary logistic regression model to outline the impact of different backgrounds on women's responsibility for collecting drinking water in India.ResultsThe results showed women fetch drinking water in more than 80% of the households that did not have drinking water sources within their premises. We outlined the significant role of social groups, the education level of male household members, the principal occupation of the households, the distance to the drinking water sources, the household head's gender, land ownership, and place of residence as the determinants of this responsibility of women in India.ConclusionWe propose constructing the necessary infrastructure to ensure that everyone has access to safe drinking water. This will not only reduce the issues of the water crisis (SDG 06) and the enormous burden in Indian women (SDG 5).