The 2020 World Water Development Report brought into sharp focus a truth that grassroots organizations have known for decades: climate change is fundamentally a water crisis, and women are on its frontlines.
Water as the Medium of Climate Impact
Climate change manifests through water—too much, too little, too polluted, too unpredictable. Extreme weather events, shifting rainfall patterns, glacier melt, and groundwater depletion all translate into water challenges that ripple through ecosystems, agriculture, health, and economies.
When we talk about climate adaptation, we're largely talking about water adaptation: managing floods, surviving droughts, ensuring safe drinking water despite contamination, and maintaining food production despite water stress.
The Gendered Dimensions of Water Scarcity
In much of South Asia, including Nepal, water collection remains predominantly women's work. When climate change makes water scarce or distant, it's women and girls who walk farther, work longer, and sacrifice more.
Time Poverty: Hours spent collecting water are hours not spent in school, generating income, or resting. For girls, extended water collection duties often mean leaving education early—perpetuating cycles of poverty and disempowerment.
Health Impacts: Carrying heavy water containers over long distances causes physical strain and injury. When water quality declines due to climate factors, women often prioritize family needs over their own health, drinking less and last.
Economic Constraints: In rural Nepal, women manage household water use, agricultural irrigation, and often small-scale food production. Climate-induced water stress directly undermines their livelihoods while increasing their unpaid labor burdens.
Decision-Making Exclusion: Despite being primary water managers, women are often excluded from community decisions about water resource management, infrastructure placement, and adaptation planning.
Vulnerable Within the Vulnerable
The intersection of gender and climate vulnerability is further complicated by other factors:
- **Rural women** face greater impacts than urban women due to direct dependence on natural resources
- **Poor women** lack resources to adapt through purchased water, wells, or resilience infrastructure
- **Indigenous women** may face additional cultural and linguistic barriers to accessing information and services
- **Elderly women** experience compounded physical challenges in accessing distant or scarce water sources
The Adaptation Imperative
Effective climate adaptation in the water sector must be gender-responsive. This means:
Inclusion: Women must be at the table when water management decisions are made—not as token participants but as equal partners with decision-making power
Infrastructure: Water points, storage facilities, and sanitation systems should be located and designed based on women's input about safety, accessibility, and convenience
Technology: Water-saving technologies, efficient irrigation methods, and monitoring tools should be accessible to and useable by women
Information: Climate and water information systems must reach women in languages and formats they can access and use for decision-making
Economic Support: Women's water-related enterprises—from small-scale farming to water vending—need support to become climate-resilient
Hope in Action
The drinkPani initiative recognizes these intersections. Our Water Clubs deliberately recruit girls alongside boys. Training for Young Water Volunteers includes modules on gender and water. Data collection captures gender-differentiated experiences of water access.
We've seen encouraging changes: girls who join Water Clubs gain confidence, scientific knowledge, and civic skills. Some have become vocal advocates for water access in their communities. When young women lead water monitoring efforts, it shifts community perceptions about who can be a water expert or leader.
From Crisis to Opportunity
Climate change poses immense challenges, but it also offers opportunities to reimagine more equitable systems. As we rebuild, redesign, and adapt our water infrastructure and institutions, we can do so in ways that advance rather than undermine gender equality.
This requires intentionality. Business-as-usual approaches perpetuate existing inequalities. But thoughtful, inclusive, gender-responsive adaptation can create transformative change.
The question isn't whether women should be part of water and climate solutions. They already are—on the frontlines every day. The question is whether formal systems, programs, and institutions will finally recognize, support, and amplify their leadership.
Water security and gender equality aren't separate goals. They're deeply intertwined imperatives for a climate-resilient future.