Author: Serah Iloube Greno
Greno, Serah Iloube, 2018 Appraising the Relationship of Water and Sanitation with the Socio-economic Status of Women in North-western Nigeria, Flinders University, College of Science and Engineering
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To promote the need for effective initiatives to reduce the effect the lack of water and sanitation have on women’s social and economic status in North-western Nigeria. This study appraises the relationship of water and sanitation with the three levels of Socio-economic Status (SES) of women in North-western Nigeria. The study demonstrates that access to water and sanitation can have a correlation with a woman’s social and economic life through noticeable pathways such as poverty, a lack of simple technology, cultural beliefs and customs and so forth, thereby having an effect on her status in the society. The NGIR6ASV (Individual Recode) dataset from the Nigeria Demographic Health Survey (NDHS, 2013) was analysed using a descriptive analysis with the IBM SPSS ver.25 software. The findings indicate that 69% of the women who travelled distances to retrieve water were in the lowest socio-economic level in terms of education, health status, autonomy in decision making and affluence. The findings further indicate 91% of the women who endured unsanitary conditions had no education at all while 46% of those with better sanitary conditions had a secondary level of education. Generally, women in all three levels of socio-economic status relied on their husbands or partners to make decisions regarding their personal health care with only 14% of women in the highest SES making independent decisions regarding their personal health care. 99.1% of the women in the lowest SES had no autonomy in decisions made over them either within their immediate household or in the wider society. This study recommends among others, a holistic approach in terms of synergy with the private sector in the form of Public Private Partnership (PPP) to enhance water and sanitation accessibility for women which, in turn could transcend to a higher SES for the women impacted.
Keywords: Water & saniatation, Socio-economic status,Women,North-west Nigeria
Subject: Environmental management thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2018
School: College of Science and Engineering
Supervisor: Associate Professor Udoy Saikia