This volume captures the impact of women’s research on the public health and environmental engineering profession. The volume is written as a scholarly text to demonstrate that women compete successfully in the field, dating back to 1873. Each authors’ chapter includes a section on her contribution to the field and a biography written for a general audience. This volume also includes a significant representation of early women’s contributions, highlighting their rich history in the profession. The book covers topics such as drinking water and health, biologically-active compounds, wastewater management, and biofilms. This volume should be of interest to academics, researchers, consulting engineering offices, and engineering societies while also inspiring young women to persist in STEM studies and aspire to academic careers. Features a blend of innovations and contributions made by women in water quality engineering, as well as their path to success, including challenges in their journeys Presents an opportunity to learn about the breadth and depth of the field of water quality Includes a history of women in water quality engineering as well as research in current issues such as urban water quality, biologically-active compounds, and biofilms

The term Niddah means separation. During her menstrual flow and for several days thereafter, a Jewish woman is considered Niddah -- separate from her husband and unable to practice the sacred rituals of Judaism. Purification in a miqveh (a ritual bath) following her period restores full status as a wife and member of the Jewish community. In the contemporary world, debates about Niddah focus less on the literal exclusion of menstruating women from the synagogue, instead emphasizing relations between husband and wife and the general role of Jewish women in Judaism. Although this has been the law since ancient times, the meaning and practice of Niddah has been widely contested. Women and Water explores how these purity rituals have affected Jewish women across time and place, and shows how their own interpretation of Niddah often conflicted with rabbinic views. These essays also speak to contemporary feminist issues such as shaping women's identity, power relations between women and men, and the role of women in the sacred.

This edited volume explores how a feminist political ecology framework can bring fresh insights to the study of rural and urban livelihoods dependent on vulnerable rivers, lakes, watersheds, wetlands and coastal environments. Bringing together political ecologists and feminist scholars from multiple disciplines, the book develops solution-oriented advances to theory, policy and planning to tackle the complexity of these global environmental changes. Using applied research on the contemporary management of groundwater, springs, rivers, lakes, watersheds and coastal wetlands in Central and South Asia, Northern, Central and Southern Africa, and South and North America, the authors draw on a variety of methodological perspectives and new theoretical approaches to demonstrate the importance of considering multiple layers of social difference as produced by and central to the effective governance and local management of water resources. This unique collection employs a unifying feminist political ecology framework that emphasizes the ways that gender interacts with other social and geographical locations of water resource users. In doing so, the book further questions the normative gender discourses that underlie policies and practices surrounding rural and urban water management and climate change, water pollution, large-scale development and dams, water for crop and livestock production and processing, resource knowledge and expertise, and critical livelihood studies. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental studies, development studies, feminist and environmental geography, anthropology, sociology, environmental philosophy, public policy, planning, media studies, Latin American and other area studies, as well as women’s and gender studies.

Water for Poor Women: Quest for an Alternative Paradigm, by Sayeed Iftekhar Ahmed, develops an alternative governance paradigm to ensure poor women's water security through their participation in the governance process. This study assesses the effects of governance on water di...

There is a renewed global commitment to 'water for all'. Yet even though women are usually responsible for domestic water provision, their needs and voices continue to be marginalized in the development process. A close analysis of current policy and practice shows that organizations providing improved water supplies to poor communities typically neglect the gendered nature of access to and control over water resources. The resulting gender bias causes inefficiencies and injustices in water provision and reduces the effectiveness of well-meant efforts. This book shows how, in different environmental, historical and cultural contexts, gender has been an important element in water provision. It draws on a wide range of first-hand material, analyzed from different disciplinary perspectives. Case studies include analysis of the role of water in inhibiting the fight against HIV/AIDS in southern Africa, and the challenges of taking gender into account in large water projects in India and Nepal.

The United Nations has proclaimed the 21st century to be the century of water. In this volume, Water and Women in Past, Present and Future, scholars analyze the gendered political economy of water resource allocations and importantly, offer recommendations for viable, women-friendly solutions to address scarcity and distribution, among other issues. Contributors also explore feminist analyses of the aesthetic dimension of water and the feminine, since water is often associated with women, shown in cross-cultural examples of mythology, symbols and legends. Intersecting the fields of hydro-politics and aesthetics, this book should be of interest to policy analysts, activists, and academics.