Buckets, Burdens, and Barriers: Women, Water Governance, and Justice

Picture a young girl navigating the crowded slum alleys of Dhaka, her fragile arms struggling to carry water containers heavier than her years. Imagine a woman in Karachi waiting for hours at a public tap, clutching her child in a queue for water. Now, shift the frame to a conference table or a community meeting where decisions about water infrastructure are made—a room often dominated by men, with women’s voices conspicuously absent.

In sprawling cities across Asia, water is not just a resource; it is a prism through which the intersections of power, inequality, and justice become vividly apparent. Unequal distribution, scarcity, and the escalating effects of climate change have turned water into an important element of national geopolitics. In conflict-prone regions, these dynamics further exacerbate existing inequalities, disproportionately impacting women. Often tasked with water collection and management, women bear the brunt of water crises stemming from geopolitical disputes. This blog, adopts a feminist perspective to explore the burdens and struggles women face while accessing critical resources like water.

For women, water signifies more than just life and labour—it also embodies exclusion, risk, and inequity. Feminist perspectives on water governance emphasise that resources like water are not merely managed through pipes and policies but also governed by societal hierarchies, particularly gendered ones, that perpetuate systemic injustices.¹ These governance frameworks often prioritise infrastructure over people, sidelining the social and cultural dimensions of water access. This neglect disproportionately impacts women, especially in urban Asia, where rapid urbanisation, climate change, and deep-seated patriarchal norms aggravate pre-existing inequalities.² Addressing these challenges requires reimagining water governance to tackle the inequities embedded in access, management, and decision-making processes.

Gendered Inequities in Water Governance: Hidden Costs

Feminist frameworks reveal the hidden gender costs embedded in water governance. Women disproportionately shoulder the responsibility of water collection, storage, and management—roles dictated by entrenched social norms. This "double burden" forces them to juggle unpaid household labour with income-generating activities, often at significant personal cost. For instance, in informal settlements in Dhaka, women spend hours each day fetching water, sacrificing time that could be spent on education, paid work, or self-care.³ Poor infrastructure, irregular water supply, and economic constraints only exacerbate these burdens.

Policies governing water supply in Asia—such as the timing of availability or the cost of drinkable water—rarely take these gendered realities into account.⁴ Mechanisms designed to facilitate access, such as water-user associations or community participation, often exclude women from decision-making roles.⁵ This exclusion denies them the opportunity to influence water allocation, perpetuating cycles of marginalisation. As Moraes and Perkins emphasise, informal water systems, while critical for household survival, are rarely recognised within governance frameworks, further silencing women's contributions.⁶

Exclusion from Governance: Impacts on Livelihoods and Well-being

The exclusion of women from water governance perpetuates structural inequalities, leaving them overburdened and economically insecure. Formal mechanisms, such as water-user associations, are often male-dominated, while informal mechanisms reinforce women’s subordinate roles as managers of scarcity. As Li underscores, this exclusion diminishes women's agency, worsening their hardships.⁷ For instance, women in Karachi’s urban slums are tasked with managing limited water resources for their households, yet they are often excluded from community meetings where decisions about water distribution are made.

These inequities impact women’s physical and mental health. Unreliable water supplies force them to stay up late at night to collect water when it becomes available.⁸ Economic insecurity deepens as their time spent fetching water limits their ability to engage in paid work or access educational opportunities. These challenges are not confined to informal settlements but reflect broader systemic gaps in urban water governance that fail to address the intersection of gender, class, and access.⁹

Geopolitical Conflict, Water, and Women

Geopolitical conflicts over transboundary water resources, such as those in the Mekong and Indus River Basins, disproportionately affect women due to their central role in water collection and management. In the Mekong Basin, China's dam construction has disrupted water flows, leading to droughts and floods that strain rural women’s livelihoods, particularly in agriculture and fishing. These environmental changes reduce agricultural productivity, forcing women to take on additional work while also managing household water needs. For example, women in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap region have reported significant hardships in sustaining their livelihoods as fish stocks dwindle due to altered water flows. This forces women to spend more time collecting water, increasing both their economic and physical hardships while further marginalising them.

Climate change exacerbates these issues by intensifying water scarcity and escalating disputes, such as those over the Indus River. Women in affected regions face compounded challenges, including reduced access to education and income due to unpaid domestic labour. Additionally, conflict zones tied to water scarcity heighten the risks of displacement and gender-based violence, such as harassment during water collection in refugee camps.¹⁰ Without integrating gender-sensitive frameworks into water governance, these conflicts will continue to perpetuate systemic inequalities, disproportionately costing women their well-being and security.

Transforming Water Governance: A Feminist Approach

Addressing inequities in urban water governance requires a paradigm shift toward gender-responsive systems. As primary managers of water at the household and community levels, women bring invaluable knowledge and practical strategies for resource allocation and scarcity mitigation.¹¹ Effective governance requires participatory approaches that bridge the gap between policy and practice by integrating both formal and informal mechanisms.

For example, women in Dhaka’s slums have developed informal systems of water rationing and collection, ensuring equitable distribution within households despite limited resources. Recognising and integrating such practices into governance structures can enhance resilience, efficiency, and equity.¹² Gender-sensitive policies that prioritise women’s inclusion in decision-making processes not only address systemic injustices but also yield broader developmental benefits, such as improved household health, reduced time poverty, and increased opportunities for women to engage in income-generating activities.¹³

Geopolitical Challenges and Policy Gaps in Water Governance

Addressing the gendered impacts of geopolitical water conflicts requires transformative governance. Geopolitical conflicts over transboundary water resources not only highlight national power dynamics but also expose significant policy gaps that fail to address their gendered impacts. Feminist scholars argue that incorporating women’s leadership in water diplomacy could shift the focus from resource competition to collaboration and equity.¹⁴ However, existing international water governance frameworks, such as the 1997 United Nations Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, focus primarily on state-centric resource-sharing agreements, neglecting the social and gendered dimensions of water access.

For example, disputes over the Mekong River among upstream and downstream countries, and the Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan, exemplify rigid geopolitical frameworks that fail to address contemporary challenges such as climate-induced water scarcity or gender-specific vulnerabilities. While these frameworks allocate water among nations, they do not address the distributional inequities that disproportionately affect marginalised communities, particularly women. Women's lived realities—marked by unequal access to water, reduced agricultural productivity, and heightened risks of violence—are rarely prioritised in these negotiations.¹⁵ Their absence from formal governance and conflict-resolution mechanisms perpetuates inequities, leaving women to shoulder increasing burdens in securing water for their households and livelihoods.¹⁶

Integrating a feminist perspective into transboundary water governance could help bridge these policy gaps. This involves ensuring women’s presence at negotiation tables and recognising their dual roles as both resource users and community leaders. Initiatives like Cambodia’s women-led water-user associations showcase how gender-inclusive governance enhances both equity and efficiency, providing a model for international frameworks to prioritise gender justice in water management.¹⁷ A feminist framework challenges entrenched power structures by questioning the dominance of state-centric and technocratic approaches, advocating for the inclusion of marginalised voices, and reimagining governance systems that prioritise care, equity, and, social justice.¹⁸

By framing water as a shared human right rather than a contested resource, feminist approaches push for governance models that transcend competition, enabling inclusive, cooperative, and sustainable solutions. Bridging the gap between geopolitical policies and local gendered realities requires a transformative shift that centers marginalised voices, prioritises collaboration, and advances equitable outcomes for all.

Conclusion: Where Water Flows, Inequality Grows

Water governance in Asia’s cities both reflects and reinforces deep societal inequalities. Women, burdened with the responsibility of managing water for their households, disproportionately bear the costs in terms of time, labour, and well-being. These hidden gendered costs, rooted in social norms and systemic exclusion, perpetuate cycles of economic and social inequality. Yet, within this challenge lies an opportunity for transformation. Women’s informal roles in water management demonstrate their resilience, ingenuity, and untapped potential for leadership.

Adopting feminist perspectives that prioritise women’s voices, knowledge, and lived experiences has the potential to transform water governance into a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable system. Actively enabling women’s participation in decision-making processes dismantles entrenched barriers and fosters governance structures that benefit entire communities. When water governance flows equitably, it paves the way for justice to grow—not just for women, but also for society as a whole.

The opinions and statements of the guest authors do not necessarily reflect the opinion and position of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

• ¹ Cleaver, F., & Hamada, K. (2010). Good water governance and gender equity: A troubled relationship. Gender & Development, 18(1), 27–41; Sultana, F. (2011). Suffering for water, suffering from water: Emotional geographies of resource access, control, and conflict. Geoforum, 42(2), 163–172.
• ² Crow, B., & Sultana, F. (2002). Gender, class, and access to water: Three cases in a globalized world. Society & Natural Resources, 15(8), 709–724; Truelove, Y. (2011). (Re-)conceptualizing water inequality in Delhi, India through a feminist political ecology framework. Geoforum, 42(2), 143–152.
• ³ Sultana, F. (2011). Suffering for water, suffering from water: Emotional geographies of resource access, control, and conflict. Geoforum, 42(2), 163–172; Resurrección, B. P. (2006). Rules, roles, and rights: Gender, participation, and community fisheries management in Cambodia's Tonle Sap Region. International Journal of Water Resources Development, 22(3), 433–447.
• ⁴ Zwarteveen, M. Z. (1998). Identifying gender aspects of new irrigation management policies. Agriculture and Human Values, 15(4), 301–312.
• ⁵ Kulkarni, S. (2011). Women and decentralized water governance: Issues, challenges, and the way forward. Economic and Political Weekly, 46(18), 54–62.
• ⁶ Moraes, L., & Perkins, P. (2007). Women and water governance: Integrating feminist perspectives. Feminist Economics, 13(2), 125–146.
• ⁷ Li, T. (2009). Gender and resource governance in Southeast Asia. Development Studies Review, 25(1), 94–112.
• ⁸ Khandker, S., Alam, S., & Hossain, S. (2020). Gender and resource inequality in rural India. Journal of Water Resource Management, 34(2), 199–214; Truelove, Y. (2011). (Re-)conceptualizing water inequality in Delhi, India through a feminist political ecology framework. Geoforum, 42(2), 143–152.
• ⁹ Crow, B., & Sultana, F. (2002). Gender, class, and access to water: Three cases in a globalized world. Society & Natural Resources, 15(8), 709–724; Resurrección, B. P. (2006). Rules, roles, and rights: Gender, participation, and community fisheries management in Cambodia's Tonle Sap Region. International Journal of Water Resources Development, 22(3), 433–447.
• ¹⁰ Sultana, F. (2011). Suffering for water, suffering from water: Emotional geographies of resource access, control, and conflict. Geoforum, 42(2), 163–172; Rein, M. (2016). Power asymmetry in the Mekong River Basin: the impact of hydro-hegemony on sharing transboundary water. Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies, 8(1), 127-162.
• ¹¹ Franks, T., & Cleaver, F. (2007). Water governance and poverty: A framework for analysis. Progress in Development Studies, 7(4), 291–306; Sultana, F. (2011). Suffering for water, suffering from water: Emotional geographies of resource access, control, and conflict. Geoforum, 42(2), 163–172.
• ¹² Kulkarni, S. (2011). Women and decentralized water governance: Issues, challenges, and the way forward. Economic and Political Weekly, 46(18), 54–62; Resurrección, B. P. (2006). Rules, roles, and rights: Gender, participation, and community fisheries management in Cambodia's Tonle Sap Region. International Journal of Water Resources Development, 22(3), 433–447.
• ¹³ Zwarteveen, M. Z. (1998). Identifying gender aspects of new irrigation management policies. Agriculture and Human Values, 15(4), 301–312.
• ¹⁴ Sultana, F. (2011). Suffering for water, suffering from water: Emotional geographies of resource access, control, and conflict. Geoforum, 42(2), 163–172.
• ¹⁵ Friend, R., Arthur, R., Keskinen, M., & Molle, F. (2019). Governing the Mekong: Engaging in transboundary water governance in Southeast Asia. Water International.
• ¹⁶ Zwarteveen, M., & Meinzen-Dick, R. (2001). Gender and property rights in the commons: Examples of water rights in South Asia. Agriculture and Human Values, 18(1), 11-25.
• ¹⁷ Sultana, F. (2011). Suffering for water, suffering from water: Emotional geographies of resource access, control, and conflict. Geoforum, 42(2), 163–172.
• ¹⁸ Zwarteveen, M., & Meinzen-Dick, R. (2001). Gender and property rights in the commons: Examples of water rights in South Asia. Agriculture and Human Values, 18(1), 11-25.