Call For Contributions – Water, Sanitation & Hygiene – Gender & Development
Author: WUNRN
Date: October 2, 2016
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS! G&D: Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
In July 2017, the international journal Gender & Development will examine the theme of Water Sanitation and Hygiene, through the lens of gender equality and women’s rights.
G&D is a unique journal, producing content on three themes each year – in March, July and November – to inform and influence development policymakers, practitioners and researchers about placing women’s rights and gender equality at the centre of their work. It is published for Oxfam by Routledge/Taylor and Francis. G&D provides a forum for the sharing of innovation, good practices and lessons learned from researchers, policymakers, development practitioners and feminist activists, particularly offering space to those from the global South. For more information, visit www.genderanddevelopment.org.
Water is at the heart of sustainable development. Sufficient, safe, accessible, and affordable water is a human right recognised by all governments worldwide, and SDG6 now aims to ensure it for all by 2030. Yet delivering Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) presents a gargantuan challenge to national and international leaders who remain far-distanced from the estimated 1 in 9 people who currently lack safe clean drinking water, and the one in 3 who lack hygienic sanitation. Water is a gender and women’s rights issue both because women have specific needs as users, including unmet needs for hygiene and sanitation around menstruation; and as carers for families and communities.
Current initiatives to meet SDG 6 are operating against a backdrop of complex crises including climate change, humanitarian crises, migration including rapid urbanisation, and questions of control and ownership of natural resources, including privatisation of water and the role of commercial and private providers. Women and men, boys and girls need equitable access to water in both quantity and quality, which prevents disease and sustains lives and livelihoods; reduced environmental health risks by managing sanitation safely and with dignity; and equal involvement in managing water and sanitation resources and safe hygiene practices – including around menstruation – to benefit families and communities.
Please write to us if you would like to contribute an article for the issue. Ideas for articles include:
- Challenges to delivering SDG6, from a gender equality/women’s rights perspective
- Women’s activism in advocacy and influencing for WASH with governments and the international community
- Case studies of work to involve women as leaders and equal participants in WASH-focused community level work, in different contexts: urban areas, humanitarian contexts, fragile environments
- Innovative work around gender-specific needs on WASH including menstruation needs of adolescent girls and young women in education and training
- Women’s rights and gender equality activism around prevention and eradication of water-borne diseases and related concerns, in different contexts
- Women’s leadership and technical expertise, in water and sanitation, from the grassroots, via technical and decision-making roles in civil society and government, to the leadership of international development organisations
- Women’s organisations framing water as an issue of justice, challenging unsustainable development models and asserting models of water provision which uphold the human right to water.
This issue hopes to explore these and other areas, to inform and empower the work of development and humanitarian practitioners and policymakers supporting gender justice and women’s rights. We publish case studies of innovative work drawing lessons for sharing with others in different contexts.
Please send a paragraph outlining your proposed idea for an article for this issue, in an email (no attachments please) to csweetman@oxfam.org.uk as soon as possible and by 20 October 2016.
This issue will be commissioned for a deadline of 31 October 2016. Commissioned articles (of around 6,000 words) will need to be completed for a deadline of 20 January 2017. Guidelines for contributors can be found at www.genderanddevelopment.org
Categories: Releases