Produced as part of the IDEAMAPS Data Ecosystem project, this dataset maps relative levels of difficulty in accessing safe and reliable drinking water across urban areas. It provides a spatial representation of access constraints by combining physical accessibility, service reliability, and demand pressures at the neighbourhood level. Model focus and indicators were prioritised through community engagement and validation exercises, ensuring that the representation of access deprivation reflects lived experiences and locally relevant conditions in the study areas.The model incorporates a gender lens by recognising that women are the primary collectors of drinking water and remain primarily responsible for household water use and management. This places women at the centre of everyday water-related labour and exposes them more directly to time burdens, queuing, and service reliability failures. However, evidence from validation Focus Group Discussions indicates that women’s participation in community-level drinking water decision-making is shaped less by formal exclusion and more by perceived opportunity costs and incentive structures. Women reported that engagement in such forums is often contingent on the presence of direct, tangible benefits, such as financial compensation, reflecting competing livelihood demands and limited perceived returns from unpaid participation. As a result, drinking water access is analysed not only as an infrastructural challenge, but as a factor with complex implications for women’s empowerment, particularly in relation to agency, participation, and the conditions under which collective engagement becomes viable.