Safe drinking water and effective sanitation is a basic human right. The health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples living on traditional Country in remote Australia can be supported or undermined by these essential services. Despite global and Australian commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals, water and sanitation service levels have regularly been identified as unreliable, unsafe, and of a lower standard than non-Indigenous and non-remote settlements. This research sought to identify the optimal conditions to enable consistent delivery of safe water and sanitation in remote Indigenous communities of Australia. Using a combination of literature reviews, interviews with key stakeholder groups and applied research findings, key conditions for improved water and sanitation outcomes were identified. These included technology for water and sanitation that is fit for purpose, people and place; capacity-building, training and ongoing support for local Indigenous service operators; and that all personnel involved in delivery require a level of cultural competency to the local and Indigenous context. These findings are intended to contribute to informing more sustainable water and sanitation outcomes in Indigenous communities.

Multiple established connections link access to safely managed water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and gender equality. As development actors seek to attain the fifth and sixth Sustainable Development Goals, the need to measure WASH programs' contributions to gender equality outcomes is increasingly pressing. Yet the measurement of such outcomes remains challenging. This article describes and justifies the theory, concepts and decisions that underlie a recently developed quantitative measure of gender equality in WASH - the water, sanitation and hygiene gender equality measure (WASH-GEM) - and outlines key tensions navigated in its development. We developed the WASH-GEM through a collaborative, iterative process informed by a feminist perspective, critical review of relevant literature, pilot implementation and partner engagement. We report on five design considerations critical for the robust design of quantitative measures of social change: conceptual framing; measurement focus; measurement context; sectoral scope; and evaluative scope. We also define the WASH-GEM's five domains of measurement: Resources; Agency; Critical consciousness; Wellbeing; and Structures, and discuss how we balanced theoretical integrity with practical application and relevance to WASH. In reflecting on the WASH-GEM design, this article contributes to a critical discourse on methodological challenges and imperatives in the measurement of complex social change.

Gender inequality remains a persistent challenge in workforces globally, with the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) workforce no exception. This paper aimed to investigate gender dynamics in the Indonesian government WASH workforce at national and subnational levels and evolve conceptual foundations for this type of study. The Gender at Work framework (Rao, A., J. Sandler, D. Kelleher, and C. Miller. 2016. Gender at Work: Theory and Practice for 21st Century Organizations. London: Routledge), provided a framing to support critical examination of power relations embedded in institutions and communities. In-depth interviews were undertaken with 52 government employees in the districts of Sumbawa and Manggarai and two national ministries. The findings identified four important themes which hinder or support gender equality in the Indonesian government WASH workforce: (a) career progression, continued education, and professional ambitions; (b) gender equality and gendered social dynamics in the workplace; (c) family and institutional support; and (d) gender-based violence and safety in the workplace. Our findings also generated insights on intersectional aspects, including people of different ethnic origins, pointing to the need to explicitly account for these in frameworks such as the Gender at Work framework. Through the identification and consideration of ‘gendered substructures’ this research provides a basis to promote greater equality in the WASH workforce.

There is a need to reflect on approaches to reaching all in rural sanitation, given evidence that disadvantaged groups often miss out on benefits from programmes. This article presents approaches from area-wide rural sanitation programming undertaken by SNV across five countries. Analysis identified ten strategies used in combination to support inclusion. The article describes the strategies and their application, then presents four implications for the rural sanitation sector: the value of a "toolbox" approach; co-creation of strategies with stakeholders; recognition of local government as a driver of inclusive services; and the need to strengthen evidence on how strategies contribute to success.

This research examined the extent to which women's ownership and management of water supply schemes led to their empowerment, including their economic empowerment, in rural Cambodia. Privately managed water supply schemes in rural Cambodia serve over one million people. This study is the first of its kind to systematically investigate the experiences and needs of female water supply scheme owners, using well-established theoretical frameworks for women's empowerment, namely Longwe's stages of empowerment, and Rowlands, VeneKlasen and Miller's elaboration on different types of power. Business management frameworks relevant to the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector were also drawn on to assess operational constraints and enablers. Fifteen structured interviews were conducted with female water entrepreneurs in rural Cambodia. Female entrepreneurs reported encountering four key barriers to establishing and managing water supply schemes. The first were operational, and government and regulatory related issues, followed by financial issues and limited demand for water services. Three important enablers were reported by entrepreneurs: social enablers, economic enablers and program support from government, associations and non-government organisations (NGOs). This study found that, whilst there was evidence of empowerment reported by female water enterprise owners, the complexity of the ongoing empowerment process, challenges and limitations were also observed. Women's empowerment can be advanced through leadership of, and involvement in water enterprises, as evidenced by this study, however, gender norms constrained women, especially with respect to mobility (leaving the home for extended periods), and household and family duties impacting on income-generating work or vice versa. As such, targeted strategies are needed by a range of actors to address such constraints. The findings of this study can assist NGOs, donors and governments incentivizing entrepreneurship in water services, to ensure that these interventions are not gender blind, and to draw on evidence of the barriers and enablers for female entrepreneurs and how these are influenced by contextualized gender norms.