A cornerstone of feminist thinking, intersectionality offers a critical analytical tool for exploring how gender intersects with other social structures of power. However, this leaves intersectionality grounded firmly in social analysis. Becoming increasingly salient are the complex political and material relations between social, technological and ecological systems (Linton & Budds 2014). Intersectionality-centering the entanglement of difference-offers an opportunity to explore the interplay between social relations and difference in the physical world (Thompson 2016). Drawing on participatory visual research with women and men across four communities in Cameroon, we elaborate how gendered social relations intersect with the material dimensions of water and sanitation. Given gendered and age-based divisions of labor, women and girls play a primary role in household water management. This paper centers women's concerns about everyday water access, use and control to elaborate how intersectional social dynamics in relation to water also intersect with water in the physical world. Expanding intersectional thinking beyond the social realm, we also demonstrate how gendered intersections shape and are shaped by material and physical dimensions of water. This suggests that theorizing about social difference alone risks missing the role of environmental factors within different groups' experiences of power, privilege and oppression.
In sub-Saharan Africa, girls' daily household chores often involve fetching water for their households. This article addresses the impact of uncertain water access in semi-urban Cameroon given the problems of rapid urbanization and increasing demands for water. A school competition engaged youth and key water sector actors in a dialogue about the water crisis in Buea town, and this resulted in the publication of the water distribution schedule. The event also drew attention to the gendered implications of the crisis in relation to girls' sexual health. Our analysis suggests that girls fetching water face multiple layers of risk that include gender-based violence and blame resulting from the gendered stigma related to young people's behavior-particularly that of girls.All this serves to increase the moral panic surrounding youth sexualities. We explicitly use the term sexualities (plural) here to recognize the multiple ways in which sexualities may be expressed, constructed and experienced (Arnfred 2005). This research points to the dire need to better understand and consider within water management strategies how girls cope with and confront these risks.
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