The power of collective female action in Africa (Ethiopia)

Daily Clarity

In a good news story out of Ethiopia the power of collective action by women, despite the lack of confidence from their spouses, shows how much can be achieved when effective co-ordination happens. In the village of Nadugne Agam, women were expected to haul heavy loads of water for miles as no dependable sources existed locally.  Things came to a head when one woman, having spent hours of backbreaking digging and carrying water reached her wattle-and-daub hut and lay down, exhausted. Her thirsty child was waiting. He asked for a drink. Get it yourself, she said, and fell asleep.  When she awoke she found that the child, as he tipped the container, had spilt the water she had worked so hard to get. Enraged, she took a stick to teach him a lesson. She beat him so hard that he died.  That sparked the other women into action so that such a tragedy would never happen again.
An aid agency originally dug bores for them, but made the mistake of giving the monies to pay for maintenance to the local men. They drank the money away so the upkeep couldn’t be paid for and the bore pumps failed. The women decided to step in and were scoffed at by the men. It seems now the men need to apologize. They were forced to realize that women are more than capable of resolving the issue and more all by themselves. This has also made huge differences to the quality of life at many levels and made the divisors of labor much more blurred. The women succeeded where the men had so clearly failed, much to their chagrin

When one woman suggested they should cap a spring which rose seven kilometers away, and pipe the water to all the local villages, the men smirked. “They said that women would never manage such a complex project,” Bichol said. “They said, Let the women try and when they fail we’ll take over”
But the women, with training from ActionAid, made a huge success of the enterprise. They added more boreholes, until here were eight across the area, each with its own pump and a generator. And they capped the spring, which produces 23 litres of water per second, and pumped it to the top of Gafat Hill into a 60,000-litre reservoir tank. From there it flows, gravity-fed, in four directions, through a 70-kilometre network of pipes, all paid for by the British aid agency.
With the water came much else. The women, who initially had been afraid even to come to village meetings – so low is the status of women in Ethiopian society – became emboldened by their success. They constituted the majority in the water project’s 178-member general assembly. All 16 members of the executive board are women.
They demanded health services such as vaccination, and took over the fight against malaria, running a programme to spray the walls of local houses and distribute insecticide-charged bed-nets. They started a small savings scheme. They participated actively not just in community meetings but have become a force on the local and district councils.
“Now we have enough time to work, to grow crops, to look after the children and to cook food,” said Byaznlegn who has become chair of the project. “We have improved our personal hygiene and have better household sanitation. Because we wash our clothes the lice that carry typhus have gone and the relapsing fever that was such a serious problem here is now almost eliminated.”
Water has brought two social revolutions. “We send our children to school, that’s the big change,” said Bichol Tselela. In Dalocha school enrolment has risen from 15pc to 71 per cent, thanks to a combination of the children now having the time to go to school and the government’s abolition of school fees for those under 15, a move made possible by the freeing of cash after the scrapping of Third World debt by the G8 at Gleneagles and elsewhere. Two of the villagers have even sent children to university.
The second major change is in the “women’s work” business of fetching water. “Now we have boys sharing the work equally with the girls,” said Bichol. “About 5 per cent of the men are doing it regularly, as a matter of routine. And in the dry season, many men will go when there is a long queue while the women prepare the food. It’s a very big change.”
Independent Appeal: Water, water everywhere (but no thanks to the men) – Indy Appeal, Appeals – The Independent