Women, Water, and Development

That women play a central role in the provision, management, and safeguarding of water is one of the four internationally accepted principles of water management. This principle is especially important for the developing world where millions of women lack access to water for their basic needs. The objectives of this chapter are to summarize what is known about women with respect to water and about water with respect to women as well as to provide a sense of the current debates around these themes. A review of the literature suggests that the lack of gender-disaggregated data on the impacts of water policies, and underlying disagreements on how gender and development should be theorized, makes it difficult to reach robust conclusions on which policies can best assure poor women reliable access to water for their lives and livelihoods.