Introduction

Abstract

It is women mainly who draw water for household use, transport it home, and store it. Women are responsible for household chores such as cooking, cleaning, and washing dishes and clothes, bathing children; they are responsible for household hygiene including cleaning toilets, water sources, and babies after defecation; they organise bath water for husbands and train children on sanitation and hygienic behaviour. To perform these tasks, when there are no nearby water sources women have to travel long distances to search for water … and where no clean water sources exist, are exposed to disease from unhygienic sources like drains, ditches or streams including shared sources with animals.

Notes

1. This issue also features as a case study on water and AIDS by A. Hutchings and G. Buijs in Coles and Wallace (2005).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tina Wallace

Tina Wallace has worked for many years in development, as a university teacher, a researcher, in INGOs and now as a consultant, attached to Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University. Recently, she has undertaken work on deepening learning and analysis on gender inequalities and women's rights with Trocaire, Womankind and on strategic thinking and learning from experience with ActionAid Ireland, Amnesty International and VSO. She has published widely on development issues, always from a gender perspective

Fenella Porter

Fenella Porter is a lecturer in Development Studies, at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her recent work has focused on change and learning processes in development organisations, but she has also undertaken research and publishing work for Oxfam, on issues such as gender and poverty, violence against women, gender and HIV/AIDS, gender and social exclusion, gender training, and gender in organisations, as well as being executive editor of Gender Works, Oxfam 1999