This is one of the first books of year 2015 that deal with the tricky and highly important subject of water and sanitation — and a welcome addition to the body of work available to practitioners.
Through four sections and 16 chapters, Gender Issues in Water and Sanitation Programmes , it covers broad concepts — water and sanitation and their relationship with women.
In fact, the final section of the book features papers presented at the National Conference on Women-led Water Management in November 2012.
In the first section, four chapters cover the overall water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) ‘sector’ and the interplay with women’s issues.
The section also sets the context for the book, that is, discussions to achieve gendered outcomes through WASH programmes rather than reproducing the tenets of the water sector.
Women and water The opening chapter is written by four people — Sunetra Lala, Malika Basu, Jyotsna and Aidan A Cronin. It is rich in facts about the role of women in WASH. The chapter evaluates seven gender analysis frameworks to develop a useful hybrid model that helps make a WASH programme more gender inclusive.
Using this, it is possible to devise a WASH programme that is gender transformative.
The next chapter similarly provides a useful vulnerability index for multiple-use water schemes. It evaluates other frameworks to suggest a new one.
The methodology suggested is robust and easy to follow. One of the editors, Anjal Prakash, and CG Goodrich are the authors of the next chapter on gender and integrated water resources management in education and research.
This chapter dwells on the nature and role of women water professionals and their educational training.
It provides interesting insights that can be summarised to say the water sector is an unfriendly place for women.
The last chapter in the section presents a succinct review of capacity building on WASH through a gender lens. In keeping with other findings in the section this chapter concludes that the sector is patriarchal.
In the second section, essays bring out the role (or lack thereof) of women in water management.
The first chapter discusses how involving women in watershed management is a tool of empowerment.
Missing in action The focus is on self-help groups (SHGs) and the authors argue that women in villages with watershed programmes have six times the savings of villages without these programmes.
This line of thinking is developed further in the next essay on the Jalswarajya Project of the World Bank, implemented through panchayats.
Women gained the confidence to participate in the project through SHGs but the project was not gender-transformative; their traditional roles in the household did not change.
The chapter entitled ‘Unleashing Gender Differentials in Water Management’ brings out another aspect of women’s relationship with water. In the Mewat region of Haryana women spend more time fetching drinking water in villages with a drinking water source than in villages without one. The chapter reiterates a well-known fact: Women are indispensable to water issues but have little say in making decisions. On a different note the following essay describes how women are more vulnerable to fluorosis than men, and how to mitigate it.
The chapter points out that fluorosis can be reversed by changing diets. Women’s leadership is central to the success of any scheme since intra-household access to food is prejudiced against women.
Jumping to water management, a subsequent essay does a meta-analysis of a successful participatory groundwater management scheme.
Through this, women learnt and applied water budgeting in 400 villages in Andhra Pradesh.
The chapter’s analysis is somewhat marred by sweeping statements without adequate backing such as “women’s concerns when prioritised automatically address sustainability issues”.
Other chapters in the section take the discussion on the role of women in water management further by exploring how SHGs catalyse leadership.
Clean it In section 3, the impact and role of women in sanitation is explored. From sanitation at the watershed level and how it empowers women, the section describes various facets of the link between sanitation and women.
The first chapter makes a case for a sanitation programme having improved the lives of women by making it convenient and safe to access toilets, along with a perceptible improvement in health and overall environment.
A more academic treatise in the chapter called ‘Women-led Total Sanitation’ underlines the greater benefits women derive from sanitation than men.
It argues for making the community-led total sanitation approach women-led in the State of Madhya Pradesh. An innovation in sanitation called Pan in the Van has been used for training and promoting inclusive WASH.
It is a women-centric approach and tried in 80 panchayats. It combines hardware with behaviour change communication into a package that can be transported in a van to remote areas. The results included delivery of entitlements, suggestions for policy formulation, coverage and improved recall of sanitation.
However, the pilot was not taken up across the State and one wishes the chapter was forthright as to the reasons for this.
Accredited social health activists (ASHAs) are frontline health workers. There have been several discussions to get them to talk about sanitation as it is critical for improving health. But in practice little has happened as they are over-worked and have little incentive to promote sanitation.
The chapter, ‘Liberty from Shame’ describes how UNICEF tried making ASHAs sanitation foot-soldiers in eight districts of Uttar Pradesh. An interesting case study, it offers a way forward to involving ASHAs in the government’s ambitious Swachh Bharat mission.
Unfortunately, this section breaks little new ground. It effectively presents case studies and reiterates well-known facts of how women are the biggest gainers from sanitation.
It does not suggest how to break the intra-household decision-making stranglehold of men. The section could have usefully incorporated a paper on making common toilets safe for women, especially those from poor families who cannot afford their own facilities.
The book ends with profiles of the authors. Each chapter has useful end-notes that provide those interested with further reading. The book is a useful compilation of fairly new material on women, water and sanitation.
It would have been more useful had the editors included a section on hygiene since most of the hygiene messages propagated by the government and NGOs are aimed at women.
MEET THE EDITORS: Aidan A Cronin is a water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) exepert at Unicef. Pradeep K Mehta is group leader, Rural Research Centre at Sehgal Foundation, Gurgaon. Anjal Prakash is with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu
The reviewer is the author of Jalyatra, India’s traditional water wisdom