Household Water Insecurity and Gender: the gender roles in practices to guarantee access to water in the context of precarious housing
When looking at the configuration of urban territories, the problem of access to adequate housing by the low-income population and the unequal distribution of infrastructure in the territory is remarkable. As a result of this structural issue, precarious settlements present large social vulnerability, with deficits in water supply, sewage collection and treatment, housing, education, health and leisure. Faced with so many difficulties, the population of these popular territories do not have access to water in sufficient quantity and quality for their daily use. Official data on water supply privilege the percentage of network coverage or the population served, not going into the household scale and the daily problems of residents. Thus, the concept of household water insecurity is present, as it goes beyond the question of whether or not there is infrastructure in the houses, when addressing the processes of production of urban space, putting social and power relations on the agenda, such as gender relations. In this sense, there is space for debate between household water insecurity and gender in the daily lives of families who suffer daily from lack of water. Therefore, the objective of this research is to analyze, based on the relation between household water insecurity and gender, how the social construction of gender makes up the daily practices of guaranteeing access to water in urban spaces in the context of precarious housing. The object of study are the residents of the Jardim Wilma Flor precarious settlement, located in the East Zone of the city of São Paulo, a popular territory that presents different experiences of access, use and management of water. This research opens space for an important part of the debate on access to water in urban territory and the social relations produced in the context of precarious housing.