The document discusses strategies for improving access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) for women. It focuses on empowering excluded and marginalized groups, especially women, to access safe and sustainable WASH services. Key approaches include developing women's leadership and awareness of their rights, supporting governments to deliver better WASH through training and policy work, and mainstreaming WASH in other development sectors like health, education, and governance through partnerships and research. Examples illustrate how these strategies have transformed lives by developing skills, addressing violence, and improving status and acceptance of marginalized women.

1. Access to WASH by women
Strategies and approaches
Indira Khurana and Sweta Patnaik

2. Improved WASH for Women
The knowledge that improved WASH for women impacts:
• Health and safety
• Education (reduced school absenteeism)
• Dignity
• Livelihoods
and
• Women – especially the excluded face violence and stress
Has led to a women inclusive approach in programming

3. Focus on key result areas
1. Transforming the lives of the Excluded and
the Marginalized (E&M) by empowering
them to access safe and sustainable
WASH services as their right
2. Support governments and service
providers in developing their capacity to
deliver safe and improved WASH as a right
for the E&M
3. Mainstreaming WASH in other
development sectors.

4. Transforming lives of the E and M
 Leadership development:
• Ensure 50% women members in VWSCs with 33% leadership
roles. Work with SHGS and adolescent groups
 Awareness raising and capacity building:
• Inform about govt programmes and responsibilities
•Water quality testing completed and analyzed in front of
women as they collect water and can discern the difference.
•Water security plans made with the active participation of
women with understanding on competing water demands and
impact on drinking water.
•Women SDC members in Hyderabad, AP, maintain logbooks for
tanker service , inform and engage with GHMC.

5. Supporting Governments to deliver better
 Skill and knowledge
o Training PRIs, especially women on water and sanitation and
their role in decentralised water management
o Trained care takers and mechanics at panchayat level
- In Jharkhand, WAI is supporting the SWSM to roll out the Jal
Sahiya programme
- Women motivators trained on programmes gain greater
understanding of the role of local government and are finding their
space in local governance structures – as sarpanches, Ward
members
- Policy level engagement at national level.

6. Supporting Governments to deliver better
Enabling Environment
o Schools have WASH facilities supporting the special needs of
girls
o Education department functionaries are oriented and
sensitised about the special needs of girls and lady teachers vis
a vis WASH facilities in schools
o Water and sanitation engineers are oriented on safer
locations for water and sanitation facilities in schools and
communities.

7. Mainstreaming WASH in other sectors
 Forging partnerships
o Joint programming on tribal self governance where gender and
WASH are cross cutting themes in 5 states of India
o Joint programming on violence against dalit women , where right
to water and sanitation is a key area being addressed along with
health and education
 Research
o Two discrete pieces of research conducted in India on the co-
relation between (non) access to WASH in urban areas and
violence against women
o One ongoing research on co-relation between access to water
and sanitation and violence against dalit women (5 states)

8. Showing the way
- Karanjikeda village,
Sehore district in Madhya
Pradesh
- Geetabai, a dalit woman
from a poor family, located
in the fringes of the village
built the first latrine
- She is the model, the
whole village followed

9. Entrepreneurship
-Trained on a range of skills
from soap to sanitary napkin
making; from building latrines
to repairing hand pumps and
water quality testing, women
are increasing earning.
-This ensure the benefits of
interventions sustain, while
their income augments
-This improves their status

10. Example 3: Claiming rights using RTI
- Programmes educate
people on their rights
and service provider
accountability
- Using RTI the group
gained knowledge of
the various works and
budgets, and are now
Lalitha a migrant from Bihar living in the effectively monitoring
Delhi’s resettlement colonies is a member
of the WATSAN committee implementation

11. Empowerment and acceptance
From double exclusion to two-fold empowerment
- Sirumbayi, from dalit community a 33 year old mother of three
was trained as a handpump caretaker. She is from a marginalised
social caste, forbidden to touch water
- Stature improved after acquiring technical skills to carry out
pump repair
-Despite her caste status, she is invited by dominant caste
communities to repair their pumps – for payment
-Slowly changing power equations

12. When the going gets tough, the tough
get going
- Kurumpanai a coastal village
in TN. Waste accumulation
engulfed the village in a
permanent stench. Out
fishing, men were indifferent
- Margaret, along with other
women, introduced
community based solid waste
management. Peace now
prevails

13. When Women Get
Water, Sanitation, Hygiene