Top 5 water crises coastal women face due to climate change

“What problems do you face while collecting water?”

Laxmi Rani Baidya from Shyamnagar Satkhira, a southwestern district of Bangladesh, paused before answering. “The moment we step out of the house, the challenges begin. As women, sometimes talking about these problems feels redundant,” she said, and women around agreed with her. 

Across Bangladesh’s coastal belt, salinity intrusion has become a burning issue due to climate change. This has made freshwater scarce. Women walk miles every day to collect drinking water and to meet household needs. Along the way, they encounter layers of social, physical, and emotional hardships. In conversations with coastal women, five major challenges were detected that define their daily struggle for water.

©UNDP Bangladesh

1. A Battle with Time

Women in coastal areas walk 2–5 km daily to fetch safe drinking water, sometimes two or three times a day, spending up to 6 hours, time that could be used for work, education, or family. 

In addition to that, sometimes they have to go out after dawn to collect water. If they return late, people start questioning their integrity. And the plight does not end there, going to collect water means children and livestock stay unattended, heightening vulnerability to accidents. Homes are left exposed to theft and robbery, further increasing their sense of insecurity.

And even though women bear the responsibility of collecting water, they still require permission from male family members to leave the house. 

2. Harassment Both Online and Offline 

The walk to freshwater sources is often marred by eve teasing and catcalling. Women shared that even while balancing heavy pitchers, they must stay alert to avoid unwanted remarks. With widespread access to smartphones, harassment has taken new forms — men capture photos or videos without consent and circulate them online, causing further humiliation and stigma.

3. Menstrual Hygiene and Health Risks 

Most coastal women rely on cloth rags during menstruation, which becomes especially difficult when walking long distances. To avoid the discomfort, many resort to taking birth-control pills to delay their periods. Even when they have their periods, they remain exposed to saline water. This unsafe condition leads to serious reproductive health complications like infection or cancer. Along with this, carrying heavy pitchers on a regular basis causes prolapsed uterus among women. 

©UNDP Bangladesh

4. Early Marriage and Domestic Violence

Frequent harassment on the roads pushes families to marry off girls early, believing it will protect them from stigma. In parallel, prolonged use of birth-control pills disrupts women’s reproductive health, sometimes causing challenges in expecting children. It leads to emotional stress and, in many cases, domestic violence.

5. Income Generation and Educational Activities

Since a lot of time goes by collecting water, this constricts their time for other works. They can barely concentrate on their household. This is the first place disrupts educational activities among women and at home reduces income generation opportunities. Many women said that, if they had the time, they would have invested it on livelihood like vegetable farming at their home. 

UNDP Bangladesh, through programmes like Gender-Responsive Coastal Adaptation (GCA) and Local Government Initiative on Climate Change (LoGIC); with support from the Green Climate Fund, and the Embassy of Sweden and Denmark, is working to reduce this burden. By installing safe water points closer to homes, these initiatives aim to ensure that no woman has to walk miles just to secure a glass of clean drinking water.