Don’t Take Your Glass of Water for Granted

We all drink water. It's the one thing everyone on Earth has in common. We drink it dozens of times a day without thinking, alongside everything else we do. We also know it matters. The common advice is to drink about eight glasses, or roughly two liters, a day. Most of us have heard this recommendation. But few of us ever count.

On my field days, I'm usually the one who forgets. I get caught up in gender analyses, community sessions, and interviews that run long. The hours pass before I notice my own thirst. When I do remember, the solution is simple. There is a bottle in my bag. I order one with lunch. I buy one from a stall near the venue. The water is always within reach. Getting it costs me a few seconds and a small amount of money, and then I forget about it again.

This ease changes the way I see the world. It creates an illusion. When water is always available, you start to assume that it is always available to everyone. You picture the woman in the village reaching for her bottle the same way you reach for yours. She isn't.

One in four, and that is last year

In 2024, 2.1 billion people still lacked safely managed drinking water. That’s one in four people on the planet. Among them, 106 million drinks straight from rivers, ponds, and lakes, the same surface water that carries disease.

The gap is widest in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region where I do most of my work. In the Central African Republic and Chad, more than nine in ten people go without. Read that again. In two countries, clean water is a privilege held by almost no one. For most people there, the glass I take for granted simply does not exist.

So where does gender come in?

Imagine a community where clean water is a luxury.

First, there is sufficient evidence to conclude that water scarcity is gendered. Designing water solutions through a gender lens reveals who suffers the most when water is scarce. For example, a study across 24 countries in sub-Saharan Africa found that when the task of collecting water falls to a child, it is a girl 62 percent of the time, compared to 38 percent for boys. Women and girls experience this imbalance daily. Since this task is considered a woman's responsibility, it adds to the burden she already carries throughout the day.

Second, the pressure does not stop at the walk. It also comes from her own family, who are slow to treat water collection as a household responsibility. Consequently, she carries the burden alone.

Third, the situation becomes even more difficult because the same norms push boys in the opposite direction. A boy who offers to help may be mocked for doing what is considered a girl’s job. Boys who step outside the expected script may be ridiculed, excluded, or marginalized by their peers in line with regional masculinity norms. This is how social norms deepen water scarcity. These norms dictate who collects the water, how communities respond when it runs low, and who pays for the shortage. In dry regions, where water is already scarce, these norms have the greatest impact.

Count the hours

Now picture the community again and pay attention to the women and girls.

Fetching water is a complex task. It is one job among many in a day already full of chores. Two jerrycans won't provide enough water for a household to drink, cook, wash, and clean with, and still have some left over for the next morning. So she will go again tomorrow. And the day after that. When the source is more than thirty minutes away, that's thirty minutes there, thirty minutes back, and a wait in between. That's an hour and a half right there. Many women do this more than once a day. In Malawi, women spend an average of 54 minutes a day collecting water. Men spend six. Multiply that across the globe, and women and girls collectively lose around 200 million hours every day to this task alone.

Researchers have a name for this: Time poverty. Consider what those hours could be used for: School. A business. Rest. Sleep. Time with a child. A girl who spends her mornings walking to a borehole arrives late to class—or not at all. When the walk gets shorter, she goes back. According to World Bank research, halving the time spent collecting water increased girls’ school attendance by about 2.4 percentage points, with the greatest gains occurring in rural areas.

It takes a toll on her body. A full jerrycan holds twenty liters or more and is carried over rough ground day after day for years. The weight settles in her back, neck, and shoulders. When water is scarce, she often drinks last, after everyone else has been served. This makes her the most exposed to whatever contaminants the water may carry. During her period, she needs clean water and a private place to use it. When neither is available, she bears the health risks.

Did you look at the system around her?

I laughed with a friend this week. She told me that her kitchen has a cabinet taller than she is, so she only uses the shelf that she can reach. We laughed, and then she said that we need more women engineers. I laughed again and agreed completely. Things are built by people who won't use them the way you do.

Water is the same. Collecting it every day doesn't give her a say in the decisions about it. Sometimes, she doesn't know where the new water point will be placed until it's already been installed. Sometimes, the route to it carries the risk of assault for her or the child she sends. Nobody asked her before choosing the spot.

This is the part we keep getting wrong. If she doesn't tell you what she needs and you decide for her, you're guessing, and you'll be wrong. The answer is to ask. Beyond asking, here is the harder question: If she uses more water than anyone else, why isn't she the one helping to govern it?

We know what changes when she does. In India, for example, when a third of the seats on the village council were set aside for women, those councils allocated more funds for drinking water than councils led by men. When the person who carries the water is closer to the decision-making process, the decisions start to reflect the need.

The numbers tell the same story. Currently, gender mainstreaming in water resource management sits at 58 percent globally, far from the goal of 90 to 100 percent by 2030. Only 27 percent of countries report having met their gender objectives in national water frameworks. We have five years left to achieve SDG 5 on gender equality and SDG 6 on water and sanitation. The two are tied together. You cannot reach one without the other.

Now the cost

The poorest households often pay the most for water. A family with a piped connection pays a low rate per liter. A family without a connection buys water by the jerrycan from a vendor at a markup every day. Thus, those with the least money spend the most to get the dirtiest water. They also pay in time, health, and lost schooling. Poverty and water poverty perpetuate each other.

This is what we mean when we say access is not equal. It's about more than who has water and who doesn't. It's also about who pays for the gap and how.

Examples of what can work

The UNEP-DHI Centre, with UN Women and the Global Water Partnership, points to seven things that make the difference:

• Leadership at the national level that commits to gender mainstreaming in writing.
• Gender written into the water laws, policies, and strategies themselves.
• Money and staff set aside for the work, so it does not disappear when budgets tighten.
• Real seats for women in shaping and running policies and programs, with parity that holds.
• Data broken down by sex, so you can see who is actually being reached.
• Training and support so women move into the decisions, beyond the labor they already carry.
• Coordination across the sectors that touch water, climate, and environment, so gender is not left as someone’s side task.

Back to your glass

Drink your water and carry your bottle, but don't mistake your ease for a separate world. Your glass and her walk both run on the same system, which was built one way—meaning it can be built another way. The pipe could reach her house. Her name could be on the plan that decides where the water goes. The girl could spend her mornings in a classroom instead of on the road. We already know how to do all this; the only thing we're waiting on is the will to do it. I am not writing this to burden you with the problem. I am writing it because I have seen the other version work, and I want that for everyone.

Further readings

1. WHO and UNICEF, Progress on Household Drinking Water and Sanitation 2000–2024: Special Focus on Inequalities (2025). 2.1 billion people lacked safely managed drinking water, including 106 million relying on untreated surface water.
2. WHO/UNICEF JMP 2024 data, charted by Statista. Central African Republic and Chad each reported 93 percent of their populations without safely managed drinking water.
3. Graham, Hirai and Kim, “An Analysis of Water Collection Labor among Women and Children in 24 Sub-Saharan African Countries,”PLOS ONE (2016). Among children responsible for collection, 62 percent were girls and 38 percent boys; women and girls spend an estimated 200 million hours a day collecting water.
4. “Norms of Masculinities and Gender Socialization Among Young Boys in South Africa,” Genealogy, MDPI (2025). Boys who deviate from dominant masculinity norms often face ridicule, ostracization, or violence.
5. WHO/UNICEF define a basic drinking water service as a source within a 30-minute round trip; longer counts as a barrier to access.
6. World Bank research, summarized by CSIS (2020). Halving water-collection time raises girls’ school attendance by about 2.4 percentage points on average, with larger effects in rural communities.
7. Chattopadhyay and Duflo (2004), via J-PAL. Indian village councils with leadership reserved for women invested in about 2.6 more drinking water facilities on average than councils led by men.
8. UNEP-DHI Centre, GWP and UN Women, Mainstreaming Gender Equality in Water Resources Management: Global Status and 7 Pathways to Progress (2025). Gender mainstreaming sits at 58 percent globally against a 90–100 percent target for 2030; only 27 percent of countries report meeting their gender objectives. Source of the seven enablers.