There is a renewed global commitment to 'water for all'. Yet even though women are usually responsible for domestic water provision, their needs and voices continue to be marginalized in the development process. A close analysis of current policy and practice shows that organizations providing improved water supplies to poor communities typically neglect the gendered nature of access to and control over water resources. The resulting gender bias causes inefficiencies and injustices in water provision and reduces the effectiveness of well-meant efforts. This book shows how, in different environmental, historical and cultural contexts, gender has been an important element in water provision. It draws on a wide range of first-hand material, analyzed from different disciplinary perspectives. Case studies include analysis of the role of water in inhibiting the fight against HIV/AIDS in southern Africa, and the challenges of taking gender into account in large water projects in India and Nepal.

Across the South Asian region, water determines livelihoods and in some cases even survival. However, water also creates exclusions. Access to water, and its social organisation, are intimately tied up with power relations. This book provides an overview of gender, equity and water issues relevant to South Asia. The essays empirically illustrate and theoretically argue how gender intersects with other axes of social difference such as class, caste, ethnicity, age and religion to shape water access, use and management practices. Divided into six thematic sections, each of which starts with an introduction of relevant concepts, debates and theories, the book looks at laws and rights; policies; technologies and intervention strategies. In all, the book clearly shows how understanding and changing the use, distribution and management of water is conditional upon understanding and accommodating gender relations. Published by Zubaan.

This is one of the first books to address how gender plays a role in helping to achieve the sustainable use of natural resources. The contributions collected here deal with the struggles of women and men to negotiate such forces as global environmental change, economic development pressures, discrimination and stereotyping about the roles of women and men, and diminishing access to natural resources—not in the abstract but in everyday life. Contributors are concerned with the lived complexities of the relationship between gender and sustainability. Bringing together case studies from Asia and Latin America, this valuable collection adds new knowledge to our understanding of the interplay between local and global processes. Organized broadly by three major issues—forests, water, and fisheries—the scholarship ranges widely: the gender dimensions of the illegal trade in wildlife in Vietnam; women and development issues along the Ganges River; the role of gender in sustainable fishing in the Philippines; women’s inclusion in community forestry in India; gender-based confrontations and resistance in Mexican fisheries; environmentalism and gender in Ecuador; and women’s roles in managing water scarcity in Bolivia and addressing sustainability in shrimp farming in the Mekong Delta. Together these chapters show why gender issues are important for understanding how communities and populations deal daily with the challenges of globalization and environmental change. Through their rich ethnographic research, the contributors demonstrate that gender analysis offers useful insights into how a more sustainable world can be negotiated—one household and one community at a time. Contributors Stephanie Buechler María Luz Cruz-Torres Linda D’Amico Georgina Drew James Eder Lisa L. Gezon Pamela McElwee Neera Singh Hong Anh Vu Amber Wutich

At birth and death, and each day in between, individual human need for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is near constant. While WASH is intensely personal, it is also about power, inequality, development and social justice. Inadequate WASH provision both results from and causes continuing poverty, and serves to reinforce gender and other inequalities. Women and girls experience WASH needs differently from men, both as individuals, and as societies' carers. Gender and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene highlights the importance of WASH provision for women and girls in their own right, as carers for families and communities, and as key to women's empowerment.

Gender equality and environmental goals are mutually reinforcing, with slow progress on environmental actions affecting the achievement of gender equality, and vice versa. Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires targeted and coherent actions.

The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Development provides a comprehensive statement and reference point for gender and development policy making and practice in an international and multi-disciplinary context. Specifically, it provides critical reviews and appraisals of the current state of gender and development and considers future trends. It includes theoretical and practical approaches as well as empirical studies. The international reach and scope of the Handbook and the contributors’ experiences allow engagement with and reflection upon these bridging and linking themes, as well as the examining the politics and policy of how we think about and practice gender and development. Organized into eight inter-related sections, the Handbook contains over 50 contributions from leading scholars, looking at conceptual and theoretical approaches, environmental resources, poverty and families, women and health related services, migration and mobility, the effect of civil and international conflict, and international economies and development. This Handbook provides a wealth of interdisciplinary information and will appeal to students and practitioners in Geography, Development Studies, Gender Studies and related disciplines.