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Gender, class, and access to water: Three cases in a poor and crowded delta.
Open accessAbstract
Water plays a pivotal role in economic activity and in human well-being. Because of the prominence of water in production (primarily for irrigation) and in domestic use (drinking, washing, cooking), conflict over water and the effects of gender-influenced decisions about water may have far-reaching consequences on human well-being, economic growth, and social change. At the same time, social conflicts and social change are shaped and mediated, often in unexpected ways, by the natural conditions in which water occurs. The social relations of water are poorly understood. This article introduces a framework for disaggregating conditions of access to water and uses it to examine three pressing questions in Bangladesh. First, extraction of groundwater for irrigation has made many drinking-water hand pumps run dry. Second, increasing use of groundwater for drinking has been associated with the poisoning of at least 20 million people through naturally occurring arsenic in groundwater. Third, the article examines some of the ways access to water has been changed by the rise of shrimp aquaculture for export. This article highlights new directions for the analysis of interactions among water, class, and gender. The existing literature has tended to focus on the implications of gender analysis for government policy, especially development projects and water resources management, and for women's organization. In this article we begin to sketch some questions that arise from a concern to understand the broader context of social change.
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“General harassment, including taunting, teasing, name calling, and throwing things at women or girls is more frequently observed in sanitation [138, 168, 174, 175, 181, 187, 190, 263] than water research [168,199] Sexual harassment, including verbal harassment, peeping, flashing, and male masturbation is also more frequently documented in sanitation [171-174, 189, 190, 214, 217, 226, 231, 233]”
From Water, sanitation, and women’s empowerment: A systematic review and qualitative metasynthesis (2022) · cites this paper as [199]
In the citing paper
“Women reported experiencing or fearing diarrhea, vomiting, dysentery, cholera, hepatitis, schistosomiasis, and skin diseases due to polluted water, [65,70,86,111,144,177,178,197,199,214,220,225,231,248,259,273,288] and experiencing diarrhea due to limitations on hygiene in times of water scarcity [70,123,202].”
From Water, sanitation, and women’s empowerment: A systematic review and qualitative metasynthesis (2022) · cites this paper as [199]
In the citing paper
“When women lacked control over income and assets, they had limited decision-making power over improving or accessing water sources [65,76,86,118,123,194,199,201,258,292].Constrained finances limited women's access to preferred water sources, [64,86,111,158,170,194,[197][198][199] desired water quantity, [86,192] and water treatment methods [86,111,118,204,293].”
From Water, sanitation, and women’s empowerment: A systematic review and qualitative metasynthesis (2022) · cites this paper as [199]
In the citing paper
“Women reported challenges related to privacy and water, specifically concerning hygiene.Women and girls in Bangladesh, [199] India, [184, 189, 226] Indonesia, [115] and Mozambique [175, 261] described challenges obtaining privacy at water sources used for bathing, post-defecation cleansing, and washing, particularly during menstruation.”
From Water, sanitation, and women’s empowerment: A systematic review and qualitative metasynthesis (2022) · cites this paper as [199]
In the citing paper
“Constraints on women's time limit access to safe water or resources needed to treat or boil water [92,118,197,199,208]. Women also spend considerable time caring for family members ill with waterrelated diseases [26,63,111,177,193,239,240,248,259].”
From Water, sanitation, and women’s empowerment: A systematic review and qualitative metasynthesis (2022) · cites this paper as [199]
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Research works printed but not linked: 11
- Agarwal, B. 1994. Gender and command over property: A critical gap in economic analysis and policy in South Asia. World Dev. 22(10):1455±1478.
- Agarwal, B. 1997b. Bargaining and gender relations: Within and beyond the household. Feminist Econ. 3(1):1±51.
- Agarwal, B. 2000. Conceptualizing environmental collective action: Why gender matters. Cambridge J. Econ. 24(3):283±285.
- Boyce, J. 1987. Agrarian impasse in Bengal. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Elson, D. 1995. Male bias in the development process, 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester Uni- versity Press.
- Harvey, C. 2002. Hydrogeological and geochemical causes of high arsenic concentrations in the Ganges Delta. US-Bangladesh Collaborative Workshop on the Ganges-Brahmaputr a Delta of Bangladesh: Issues of Land, Water and Environment, Bangladesh, January 28±31.
- Jackson, C. 1998. Gender, irrigation and environment: Arguing for agency. Agric. Hum. Values 15(4):313±324.
- National Conference. 1999. Proceeding of the National Conference on Co-ordinated Action for Arsenic Mitigation, February, Dhaka, Bangladesh, organized by Government of Bangladesh with UNDP, World Bank, WHO, UNICEF.
- Pearson, R. 1992. Gender matters in development. In Poverty and development in the 1990s, eds. T. Allen and A. Thomas, 291±312. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Rahman, A. 1994. The impact of shrimp culture on the coastal environment. In Environment and development in Bangladesh, eds. A. A. Rahman, S. Huq, R. Haider, and E. Jansen, Vol. 1, 449±524. Bangladesh: University Press Ltd.
- Sadeque, S. Z. 1996. Nature's bounty or scarce commodity: Competition and consensus over ground water use in Banglades h. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Inter- national Association for the Study of Common Property, Berkeley, CA, June.
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Sorted by citations
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Sultana, F. (2011) · Geoforum · doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2010.12.002 · Cited by 570
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Sultana, F. (2009) · Gender, Place & Culture · doi:10.1080/09663690903003942 · Cited by 338
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Sultana, F. (2013) · The Professional Geographer · doi:10.1080/00330124.2013.821730 · Cited by 334
Living in hazardous waterscapes: Gendered vulnerabilities and experiences of floods and disasters
Sultana, F. (2010) · Environmental Hazards · doi:10.3763/ehaz.2010.si02 · Cited by 202
Metadata
- Authors
- Crow, B., & Sultana, F.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Santa Cruz (US)
- ORCID
- Sultana, Farhana
- Venue
- Society & Natural Resources
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2002-09
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 709-724
- ISSN
- 0894-1920 (ISSN-L)
- 1521-0723
- OpenAlex
- W1559454724
- Cited by
- 186
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 7
- FWCI
- 7.90
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.escholarship.org
- Locations
- Society & Natural Resources (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- University of Minnesota
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Water Governance and Infrastructure
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Water Science and Technology › Water Resource Management and Quality
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Transboundary Water Resource Management
- Keywords
- water access, gender, social class, groundwater pumping, arsenic toxicity, drinking water, irrigation, shrimp aquaculture, Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta, Bangladesh, social change, water conflicts, hand pumps
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