The University of Pennsylvania, which some forget is a private, Ivy League university, has recently estbalished wH2O: The Journal on Gender & Water, the first such journal with this focus.
This foresight calls for a shout-out to the Penn folks and their supporters. You're thinking, 'What, another journal?" You've got that right, and it's about time that this issue had its own forum. Why? Read on, my friend.
From the 'About Us' page:
wH2O is an online, open-access academic journal for women and water issues around the world. Our vision is to publish a yearly journal; provide a centralized hub for women, water and sanitation information; and eventually, be able to provide research grants to facilitate more research in this space. Join us on WordPress, Facebook or Twitter.
Our mission is to advance women’s economic and social development by creating a centralized body of interdisciplinary research on water and sanitation issues. The issue is crucially important: Women bear the brunt of gathering water worldwide; in developing countries women walk up to 5km each way and expend up to half their calories on water fetching. Providing water access and sanitation means that women can stay in school longer and are healthier and lose fewer days from sickness in the family. Governments, foreign aid agencies and non-governmental organizations are increasingly paying more attention to the importance of women’s access to water and sanitation.
The idea for this initiative came from an early 2011 trip to India and Sri Lanka on behalf of the Master of Environmental Studies program at Penn, the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership at Wharton and the Philadelphia Global Water Initiative. The trip was made by a man with a safari vest and hat, Professor Stanley Laskowski, and 2 students Dakota Dobyns and Caroline D’Angelo. We spoke with several people in the field from the U.N. and NGOs (many of whom will be a part of this project) who detailed the type of leadership and partnership necessary to advance women’s status through fixing sanitation and water issues.
Interested? Join us! We are always looking for more hands on deck.
Their vision is to publish one issue per year. I suspect they might have to increase the frequency.
Some of the wH2O folks (interview) were at the 6WWF. Wish I had been able to meet them.
If you are going to be in the Philadelphia area on 27 April 2012 and would like to attend the wH2O Launch Party, RSVP here.
The inaugural issue will be posted shortly. It will be free.
Best of luck to this important initiative.
"In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference." - Rachel Carson
"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt.
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