The October General Meeting was a special one because it was held on UN Day, October 24.

Winners of UNWA’s poster competition received their prizes from one of the judges, Jean Sack.

The speakers at the meeting, Suzanne Hanchett and Begum Shamsun Nahar, spoke on Gender and Water in Bangladesh, commemorating 2003 as the Year of Freshwater. They are currently providing the gender aspect for an ADB-funded project on small-scale water resources development.

Dr Hanchett said water was essential to life and household work. Water quality and quantity was of concern to all. We consume water, use it for production and it is our environment.

Bangladesh has too much water but sometimes, it is also affected by drought.

The subject of gender and water was complicated. The treatment of women in their relation to water reflected the value that the society placed on women and their work.

Water is central to women who had many types of responsibilities, including providing safe sources of domestic water.

During floods, for examples, the men just stopped working while it was up to the women to make sure that their families were safe and fed and that their goods were protected.

Many households in Bangladesh get their water from tube wells. In some villages, women now owned tube wells. They were doing their own repairs and some of them even went into business repairing tube wells. Men were surprised that women were able to perform such tasks because they believed women had smaller brains.

Now most districts have problems with arsenic contamination and women face new demands of finding safe water. Some are using surface water and falling ill. Public information campaigns are working well and treatment was being offered in clinics for arsenic poisoning, although some doctors are not familiar with the symptoms.

Dr Hanchett and Ms Nahar are providing the gender equity policy for the small-scale water resources development sector project handled by the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) and funded by the ADB and the Netherlands government. This covers such areas as flood control, water conservation, irrigation and water management.

Women are sharing the benefits of the project and joining in its operation and maintenance. Many were appointed as treasurers because they handled money well and were honest. They had demanded and received equal pay for equal work, a policy that has spread to all LGED projects.