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| Gandhiji was once asked,
"When we plan for our country, what should we remember most?" "Think of the
last man", he replied.Experience has taught us, however, that the
lastman is invariably a woman.
No other group is more affected by
environmental destruction than poor village women. Every dawn brings with it a long march
in search of fuel, fodder and water. It does not matter if the women are old, young or
pregnant: critical household needs have to be met day after weary day. As ecological
conditions worsen, the long march becomes ever longer and more tiresome.
—Anil Agarwal
Centre for Science and Environment,
Towards Green Villages
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| Girls spend
more than 7 times as many hours in wood and water collection as compared to adult males
(HDR, 1995) |
M en
might be cooking and washing on television but in the real world, these are still
women’s jobs. The lower you go on the economy ladder, the fewer men are doing these
‘household activities’. In this economy ladder, after you go down a couple of
rungs, there are no flashy microwave ovens, refrigerators and washing machines. The
familiar red LPG cylinders also disappear somewhere around the middle. Towards the
bottom, you would be lucky if you managed to uproot a few damp weeds to cook your food.
Add social stigmas, dogmas, responsibilities and physical disadvantages to this. A woman
at this level, does not matter if she is 80 or 8, pregnant or sick, has to ensure that her
family has food to eat and water to drink, has to feed the animals the family has and if
the husband is out looking for a job in a town, has to plough the fields. Women collect
fuel wood, fetch water and care for the livestock — they are more bound to natural
resources than men are.
So it is not surprising that they pay a greater price when environmental degradation
takes place. Deforestation, water scarcity, soil degradation. Exposure to agricultural and
industrial chemicals and organic pollutants. They all affect women's workloads, nutrition
and health.
For example, deforestation makes it more difficult to collect fuel wood. When women
travel further and take more time to do these activities, girls become the first
casualties. They’re usually taken out of school to assist their mothers.
These factors also put women at risk to malnutrition and reduce their economic
productivity.
A survey in Gujarat found that women on an average now spend four or five hours a day
collecting fuel wood, where previously they would have done so once every four to five
days.
Environmental risks in the home may have a disproportionate impact on women's health
because of women's different susceptibilities to the toxic effects of various chemicals.
In fact, of the 3 million annual air pollution deaths, 2.8 million are from indoor air
pollution. The figure is 2.2 million people for developing countries. And the biggest at
risk are rural women who spend hours in front of smoky chulhas.
It is ironic that though women of the world are more involved in environmental
activities and the most affected by degradation and pollution, they are kept out of
environmental policies at the local, national and global levels. This despite the fact
that they are better ecological managers than men.
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