Women, Water and Spatial Warfare explores access to water and sanitation through the narratives of the women living in Woodlane Village informal settlement. Situated in an affluent area of Pretoria-east, the inhabitants of Woodlane Village informal settlement -with the assistance of their allies- have fought numerous legal battles to remain residents of the area despite much resistance from their suburban neighbours. Their exclusion and alienation have had dire consequences for the safety and well-being of the residents, especially the women. Furthermore, Woodlane Village has relied on portable water and sanitation solutions for nearly 10 years, supplied by the municipality as mandated by court order in 2009.

Meanwhile, studies have shown that women suffer disproportionately from lack of access to adequate sanitation. Inadequate sanitation in informal settlements dovetails many other human rights-based issues relating to water, housing, and healthcare. Furthermore, access to sanitation is a socio-economic right that overlaps with both public and private responsibility.  Collaborative Autoethnography is employed in field research to surface, articulate, and make sense of these issues though a spatial lens. The collaboration is between the researcher and research participants from Woodlane Village, both engaged in autoethnography to produce a collective product that benefits from dialogic exchange. This methodology is particularly useful when operating in places of power imbalances and surfaces otherwise seen details of life pertaining to sanitation and water management.

The research concludes that women, despite knowing better, resort to unsafe methods to manage the issues presented by their circumstances, however they also innovate spatial tools to overcome these challenges. These spatial tools are applied to public water infrastructure design through anchor building programs to assist residents, particularly women to negotiate their private concerns in the public realm. The dissertation is arranged in dimensions of social, infrastructural, and ecological theory to help contextualise the argument for how public water infrastructure can benefit not only the resident’s informal settlement but the larger ecosystem of people and the environment.