It begins with a bucket.
Before she can write her name, she learns to carry water. At four, maybe younger, she trails behind her mother, wobbling under the weight of a plastic pot. According to UNICEF, women and girls spend 200 million hours a day collecting water. This current pulls her from school, erodes her safety, and drains her time. In the global South, the cost of clean water is tied to a girl’s future with a bucket as a barter.
And yet, water has always been mythologised as feminine. The English word "Earth" has its roots in the Sumerian "Ea," meaning "house of water." Across civilisations, water has been mythologised as feminine, nurturing, fertile, and essential. In Greek mythology, water was ruled by goddesses like Tethys and Amphitrite. In Hindu tradition, the goddess Ganga flows through the cosmos carrying sins and salvation alike. In Buddhism, water symbolises purity and compassion. Yet, in reality, the sacred and the societal diverge. The same societies that sanctify water often place its burden squarely on women.
In the Indian landscape, before the era of individual hand pumps and tanks, the community well was more than just a source of water. Oral folklore emerged from the toil of hauling water. One well-known North Karnataka folk ballad, “Kerege Hara,” meaning “sacrifice to the tank,” captures the deep social and spiritual stakes women have long held in water access.
"Hennu harutide kerege, neerige avalu bali."
(A woman is sacrificed to the tank; she becomes the offering for water.)
These lyrics are testimonies of generations of women negotiating their identity within the drudgery of daily labour. In Rajasthan, traditional lehenga-clad women are iconically associated with balancing earthen pots on their heads and travelling barefoot for miles. While they adorn tourist postcards and Amul ads, the underlying reality remains harsh: long walks without proper roads, dangerous wells, extreme heat, and water scarcity that thins their bodies and time.
The time tax is staggering and generational. In Maharashtra’s Nashik district, women rappel into dry wells during summer months, waiting hours for a trickle of water. Leela, a 29-year-old woman from Bardechi Wadi, fell into a well during one such attempt. "I thank God I didn’t fall from the top. I may not have survived," she told Al Jazeera. Despite the danger, her daughter, Varsha, and mother-in-law still descend into that same well.
Even in households with taps, it’s the daughter who serves water to guests. Cleanliness falls on her too—boiling, filtering, storing. Globally, 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water. In most capital-poor countries, it is women who bear the physical and social cost of this gap. The result? Exclusion from schools, missed economic opportunities, unsafe pregnancies, and long-term health complications.
According to a 2019 study by Prüss-Ustün et al., inadequate access to WaSH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) services causes 9.1% of the global disease burden and 6.3% of all deaths. Women and girls are disproportionately affected. Diarrhoeal diseases, menstrual health complications, reproductive tract infections, and maternal health issues stem from contaminated water.
The commodification of water under global capitalism, bottled brands, water ATMs, and industrial hoarding has deepened the water governance inequity. Anti-globalisation scholars argue that how we treat nature is a mirror of how we treat each other. When land became private property, then followed, Water, the next frontier being monetised. For women, this shift carries material and ideological consequences: from primary caretakers to marginal stakeholders.
And like water, women mirror osmosis, drawn through barriers by necessity, but in doing so, becoming agents of soft revolution. In Kenya, where prolonged drought has left regions like Kitui and Turkana dry for months, groups of over 175 women have been trained as rainwater tank masons through initiatives like the Global Women’s Water Initiative (GWWI). Groups like Umande Trust and Groots Kenya lead rainwater harvesting initiatives, build sanitation hubs, and fight for public water points.
This is where the narrative bends. From Ganga to Leela, from sacred myths to slum taps, the journey of water mirrors the journey of women: undervalued, overburdened, but essential.
Perhaps the story of Genesis isn’t just about the beginning of life, but about who keeps it going. If the Earth is our mother, then it is time we ask
“Who carries her burden?”
And like water, the answer flows quietly, carried on the backs of women.
Posted 04/09/2025
