Gender: Barefoot technicians: the water-women of rural Gujarat
▻http://www.fao.org/gender/gender-home/gender-why/bite-sized-stories/barefoot-technicians-the-water-women-of-rural-gujarat/en
Mechanical faults in village hand pumps are all too common, as are leaks and other problems in rural pipelines. Repairs are often slow to arrive (if they arrive at all), and occasionally, government-employed or contracted repairmen may even submit false repair reports, claiming that the water supply has been repaired and is operating normally, when this is not the case.
For the women of Vata, a rural village in the Sabarkantha district of Gujarat, the problem was getting out of hand. In response, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a non-governmental organization of poor, self-employed women workers (many of whom are rural women farmers), began working with the state government to train women in Vata and other villages on hand pump maintenance and repair.
Water infrastructure and mechanical knowledge were typically considered to be male domains, and many of the men of the village were initially skeptical of the initiative. They doubted that the women would have the technical aptitude for the work. But over time, they were impressed to see that the women were indeed able to repair faulty pumps and keep them working well.