Empowerment and water security: Globally measurable or context specific? Evidence from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Kenya

Gendered inequalities in water security persist globally and are only partly explained by inadequate water supply infrastructure. The use of household-level access as the unit for measuring water security limits understanding of intra-household disparities, including the extent to which decision-making processes and gendered attitudes on water vary within households. While scholars have brought attention to the daily practices and negotiations that constitute water security, systematic assessment of agency across diverse cultural contexts remains limited. This study investigates how agency, attitudes and voice in relation to household water security varies across three distinct study locations in Khulna, Bangladesh, Turkana Central, Kenya, and Akaki, Ethiopia. Household surveys with pairs of male and female respondents were conducted across the three sites, applying the Empowerment in WASH Index tool comprising a series of agency-related indicators in water and sanitation management for 1747 respondents. Results reveal that while women consistently experienced constraints in many common domains relative to men, there are also context-specific disparities. Restrictive gender attitudes toward water roles played a larger role in driving disempowerment in Khulna than in Turkana Central, where water collection time was more important than in the other sites, while in Akaki limited access to information on water rights was a key constraint. The findings indicate that agency-based constraints can perpetuate insecurity even where physical access to water sources exists, emphasizing the importance of these considerations alongside improvement of water infrastructure to support context-responsive and gender transformative approaches in the water sector.