Beyond drinking water supply infrastructure: gendered lived experiences in coastal Bangladesh

Women and water have extensively been written about, especially in the context of disaster. Given increasing water scarcity and frequent disruptions to water infrastructure, a large number of water purification technologies have been developed in numerous water-scarce regions by both national and international stakeholders. Despite technology development and demonstrated benefits, there are certain challenges to water access such as lack of nuanced policies, corruption within local institutions, gender and social inequality, and perceived high costs of water. The coastal region of Bangladesh illustrates these issues, with frequent disasters such as floods, cyclone and storm surges, and increasing salinity leading to an acute drinking water crisis. After the arsenic crisis and two of the most devastating cyclones in the history of the country, Sidr in 2007 and Aila in 2009, this region has received huge attention and continual investments in the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector. However, whether or not these interventions could deliver what they were meant for is a different question, a question charged in the space of gender, power, politics, and laws. Through a lived experience approach, perception of lack of decision-making, negative long-term impacts to community well-being, anxiety and distress, corruption in water access, and tension between the socioeconomic power differentials were identified among the primary water users–women. In addition to establishing lived experience as an effective approach in gender–water–infrastructure studies, the study has implications for policy, and practice of development interventions, specifically, the emphasis of gender and power as an important component of designing such interventions to avoid abrupt infrastructure failures.