Gender Issues in Water and Sanitation Programmes

Exclusion and inequitable access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services and opportunities are major concerns to development practitioners. The job of providing water for the household invariably falls on women, often at the expense of their education, income-earning opportunities and social, cultural and political involvement.

This book aims to unpack the key elements of the WASH–gender nexus, examine these and recommend ways ahead for improved gender outcomes and WASH impact in India.

Aidan A. Cronin trained as a civil and environmental engineer and holds a PhD in Water Resources from Queens University, Belfast. He has worked in consultancy and then as a Senior Research Fellow at the Robens Centre for Public and Environmental Health, University of Surrey, UK, where he spent five years researching the impact of anthropogenic activities on water quality in the EU and developing country settings. He then worked as a water and sanitation advisor at the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees in their Public Health Section in Geneva, Switzerland, before joining UNICEF India in 2008. He managed the UNICEF water and sanita­tion programme in Odisha, India, up to September 2010 when he joined the New Delhi office as the water advisor. His research interests are in understanding the impact and contribution (health, nutrition, economic and social) of WASH provision and the processes needed to achieve these.

Pradeep K. Mehta is Group Leader, Rural Research Centre, S M Sehgal Foundation, Gurgaon, India. He holds a PhD in Economics from Mysore University through the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore; an MPhil in Planning and Development from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay; and M.A. and B.A. degrees in Economics (honours) from Punjab University, Chandigarh. A development specialist, he has over eight years of experience in teaching and research. His areas of expertise are rural development, agriculture, climate change gender, water and impact evaluation.

Anjal Prakash is the Executive Director at SaciWATERs, South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies based at Hyderabad in Southern India. He is also the Project Director of ‘Water Security in Peri-Urban South Asia,’ a project funded by IDRC. He has worked extensively on the issues of groundwater management, gender, natural resource management, and water supply and sanitation. Having an advanced degree from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India, and PhD in Social and Environmental Sciences from Wageningen University, the Netherlands, Dr Prakash has been working in the area of policy research, advocacy, capacity building, knowledge development, networking and implementation of large-scale environmental development projects. Before joining SaciWATERs, Dr Prakash worked with the policy team of WaterAid India, New Delhi, where he handled research and implementation of projects related to Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Dr Prakash is the author of The Dark Zone: Groundwater Irrigation, Politics and Social Power in North Gujarat, published by Orient Longman. His recent edited books are Interlacing Water and Health: Case Studies from South Asia (2012) by SAGE Publications and Water Resources Policies in South Asia (2013) by Routledge. He is presently co-editing books on case studies of IWRM and Peri-Urban Water Security Issues to be published by Routledge and Oxford University Press, respectively.