Gender and Water Sanitation and Hygiene

Book excerpt: 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.