One of the major changes in the water sector over the last few decades has been the enhanced thrust on institutional reforms, including the increasing recognition of the bottom-up approach to management as against the techno-centric top-down one. At the heart of this lies the concept of greater inclusiveness of all stakeholders, including women and people lower in socio-economic hierarchies. Hence the greater necessity of understanding their differential needs. A need to integrate gender and equity concerns in the water policy discourse stemmed from two facts: first, that women are the primaty collectors of water and also responsible for health, hygiene, and sanitation at the household level; second, that historically the above work has been seen as non-productive and women have not had adequate representation in decision-making around water. So when water becomes a scarce good, the more privileged inevitably find ways to maintain access.