Gender identities, water insecurity, and risk: Re-theorizing the connections for a gender-inclusive toolkit for water insecurity research

Informed by decades of literature, water interventions increasingly deploy “gender-sensitive” or even “gender transformative” approaches that seek to redress the disproportionate harms women face from water insecurity. These efforts recognize the role of gendered social norms and unequal power relations but often focus narrowly on the differences and dynamics between cisgender (cis) men and women. This approach renders less visible the ways that living with water insecurity can differentially affect all individuals through the dynamics of gender, sexuality, and linked intersecting identities. Here, we first share a conceptual toolkit that explains gender as fluid, negotiated, and diverse beyond the cis-binary. Using this as a starting point, we then review what is known and can be theorized from current literature, identifying limited observations from water-insecure communities to identify examples of contexts where gendered mechanisms (such as social norms) differentiate experiences of water insecurity, such as elevating risks of social stigma, physical harm, or psychological distress. We then apply this approach to consider expanded ways to include transgender, non-binary, and gender and sexual diversity to deepen, nuance and expand key thematics and approaches for water insecurity research. Reconceptualizing gender in these ways widens theoretical possibilities, changes how we collect data, and imagines new possibilities for effective and just water interventions. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Value of Water Engineering Water > Water, Health, and Sanitation Human Water > Water as Imagined and Represented Human Water > Methods.