To understand safe water and sanitation in East Africa, it is important to consider the contributions of African feminist analysis. This perspective will unveil inequities in the distribution of resources, demonstrate how localized solutions which are driven by women's collaborative work have had an impact by temporarily easing the burden, and paint a multilayered picture of the lives of women and girls who are the predominant providers of water to households. This book explores the effects of water and sanitation quality and availability on early childhood morbidity in East Africa from an African feminist sociological perspective. It presents a framework that considers the ways that the development industry, neoliberalism, neocolonial relations, gender, class, ethnicity, globalization, and other dimensions of oppression intersect to impact upon the experiences and agency of women and children accessing clean water and safe sanitation and reducing early childhood morbidity in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. This work offers a vital contribution to the social scientific literature by adapting the vibrant intellectual work of African feminists to a quantitative methodology and enlarging the scope of empirically and theoretically grounded studies within the field of environmental sociology.
Introduction: Assata Zerai and Brenda N. Sanya Chapter 1: The Lives of Women and Children in East Africa Assata Zerai Chapter 2: Structural and Economic Analysis of Declines in Water and Sanitation in East Africa Shorma Bianca Bailey and Assata Zerai Chapter 3. Public Goods, Citizenship Rights: How Lingering Structural Inequalities Define Social Services and Government Policies Brenda N. Sanya Chapter 4: Access to Safe Water, Women's Empowerment, and Decentralization Systems in Tanzania Teresia R. Olemako Chapter 5: Gender as Social Structure and its Potential Impact on Safe Water and Sanitation Technologies in East Africa: An African Feminist Analysis Assata Zerai and Rebecca Morrow Chapter 6: Environmental Contamination and Early Childhood Morbidity in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda Assata Zerai, Rebecca Morrow, and Courtney Cuthbertson Conclusion: Paying Serious Attention to Women's Scholarship to Influence Policy in East Africa Assata Zerai and Joanna Perez Appendix 1: River Basin Model and Decentralization System Appendix 2: Population in the Area under Study in Tanzania's Pangani River Basin Appendix 3: Safe Global Water and Sanitation Institute Summit Program
