“We Women Are Suffering”: Fragile Water Infrastructure and Gendered Embodied Labor

Marlotte de Jong and Bilal Butt

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2025, vol. 115, issue 3, 705-724

Abstract: One of the core tenets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 is the achievement of universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030. In Kilifi County, Kenya, the official narrative claims all residents have access to clean and safe drinking water. Many residents counter the official narratives, however, saying they experience frequent water supply interruptions and often go months, sometimes years, without access to clean and safe drinking water. Using household surveys, key informant interviews, and participant observations from eighteen months of ethnographic field work in Kilifi County, this research examines the fragility of water infrastructure to elucidate the gendered material, emotional, and embodied experiences of water insecurity in rural and periurban coastal communities. We argue that water security can better be assessed through an understanding of infrastructural fragility than the absolute presence or absence of necessary infrastructure. By recognizing the inherent fragility of water infrastructure systems, this analysis elucidates the material consequences for residents, as reflected through their gendered emotional and embodied experiences of water insecurity. Building on previous scholarship in geographies of the body, space, and infrastructure, this work makes visible the gendered, emotional, and embodied impacts of fragile water infrastructure in Kilifi North and the specific ways in which women’s bodies become substituted for the decaying infrastructure.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2024.2446559

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