09/23/2026
A woman in rural India used to walk to the well. Now more often than not, the well runs dry , so she walks to the next one. Then the one after that. The water didn’t move. The climate did.
Across India and much of the Global South, women and girls carry the primary responsibility for collecting water. Climate variability isn’t creating this burden, it’s stretching it. Erratic rainfall and groundwater depletion mean longer distances and longer queues, which eat into time for school, paid work, and rest. That same exposure also increases the risk of violence during collection. For women and girls with disabilities, the picture is starker still: inaccessible terrain and a lack of assistive infrastructure at water points can shut off access altogether, often deepening dependence on other women as caregivers.
Climate adaptation plans tend to measure water scarcity in litres and kilometres. They rarely measure it in hours taken from someone’s day, or in who is put at risk to close that distance.
When your work maps “distance to water source” as a climate indicator, does it also ask who is walking it, and what it costs them?
Explore how gendered time burdens intersect with climate stress on the Centre for Inclusive WASH
