Water and Gender in Africa

I am aware that previously in my blog, I have focused on the experience of cisgender women when examining gender in relation to water and development in Africa. Therefore, for my final blog post, I would like to look at the experience of those within the LGBTQ community, focusing specifically on transgender individuals. In an article written by Keuroghlian et al.  it is stated that 'sexual and gender minority (SGM) people are often stigmatised and mistreated based on their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression'  (2021). SGM individuals experience 'chronic discrimination, victimisation and violence' ( ibid ). It is for these reasons that it is crucial to spotlight the experience of SGM people when looking at the wider topic of water and development in Africa, because at the moment the hardships faced by these groups are not being heard in discussions of international development.  Image: Trans Rights are Human Rights One area where the difference of ex

As has been highlighted in the comments of several of my previous blog posts, one of the biggest barriers to gender equality is financial inequality.  As was stated by Asongu et al. in their paper " Inequality and gender economic inclusion: The moderating role of financial access in Sub-Saharan Africa ", 'women in the sub-[Saharan] region are the poorest and least included in the formal economy in the world and the exclusion of women represents a significant waste of development resources. No society can sustainably develop (politically, economically and socially) if the majority of its population is excluded from contributing to economic development ' (2020).  In fact, 'the cost of gender exclusion in the sub-region is estimated at about 2.5 trillion USD' ( ibid ). This amount of money would make a huge difference to achieving targets 6.1 and 6.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), referring to access to drinking water and sanitation. In fact, a Unice