Gendered Roles and Time Poverty: Exploring how Water Shortages Affect Adolescent Girls in Zimbabwean School Nutrition Gardens and their Academic Performance

Abstract

This study delves into a rather pressing issue that sits at the crossroads of gender roles, the burden of time and the scarcity of water, particularly in those remote corners of Zimbabwe. Here, the study takes a closer look at how these factors influence the participation of adolescent girls in school nutrition gardens and, more importantly, their academic performance. In these waterchallenged regions, old customary norms lean heavily on the shoulders of women and girls for fetching water and managing household needs. This places a disproportionate burden on them, often resulting in what is termed 'time poverty'. This situation runs counter to the bright aspirations of the Heritage-based Education 5.0 philosophy, which strives to instil practical skills, innovation and community service values which often sprout and flourish in school projects like nutrition gardens. These projects, sprouting across the parched lands of Zimbabwe, not only serve as practical applications of the Education 5.0 ideals, but also double as living classrooms for teaching agriculture, offering community service through food security. However, the prosperity of these gardens hinges on one vital element: consistent access to water. There is a notable gap in research examining how the daily chore of collecting water — a task made more troublesome by climate change and relentless drought — steals precious time from girls, limiting their opportunities to participate in these gardens and attend to their studies, homework and, ultimately, their academic success. While some scholarly works have acknowledged the connection between water scarcity and girls’ education, few have untangled the specific effects of time poverty on school-based projects that align with educational reforms. Thus, this study employs a quantitative, cross-sectional research design, pulling together existing secondary data from five carefully chosen water-scarce districts in Zimbabwe (agricultural regions IV and V). The study draws on five years' worth of aggregated, anonymised data from the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education on girls' school attendance, participation in gardens and academic performance, as well as insights from ZIMSTAT on household time use and water access, alongside information from NGOs and local authorities on drought conditions and borehole availability. The research employs statistical methods, primarily regression modelling, to examine the correlation and causal relationship between time spent fetching water — used as a proxy for time poverty — and girls' participation in school gardens and their academic scores across subjects. The literature review draws on theories of gender and development (focusing on time poverty and the gendered division of labour), relevant educational policy documents (particularly the Heritage-based Education 5.0 curriculum framework) and environmental studies examining the impact of climate change, water security and rural livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. By relying solely on existing data, the research aims to provide an expansive view of these issues across a significant period marked by severe drought, hopefully steering clear of biases that might arise from collecting primary data in communities that are already finding their footing quite shaky.