Gender, Water and Development.

AuthorSchulman, Bonnie Rose
PositionFURTHER READING - Book review

GENDER, WATER AND DEVELOPMENT

Tina Wallace and Anne Coles

(Oxford, England: Berg Publishers, 2005), 256 pages.

In 1959 in a small town in Cameroon, a woman disrobed in the middle of a crowded political rally, standing naked to protest the lack of water in her town. Almost fifty years later, about 1.1 billion people across the globe remain without proper access to acceptable water sources.

According to Gender, Water and Development, women play an integral role in this water dilemma. Editors Anne Coles and Tina Wallace illustrate how this burden falls more heavily on the shoulders of women, who rely on water to meet the basic domestic needs of drinking, cooking and washing.

For Coles and Wallace, the current discourse on water and gender fails to adequately address crucial issues, such as the systematic subordination of women and the barriers that prevent women from influencing water programs. The editors argue that the current discourse on gender analyses of water fails to consider the scope and origin of gender inequalities, specifically as they relate to programs that seek to provide poor communities with water access.

The book's contributors address historical and...

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