Gender Inequalities in WASH

Happy World Toilet Day! First established in 2013 by the World Toilet Organisation, World Toilet Day has been celebrated every year on November 19th with the aim to celebrate toilets, raise awareness of those living without access to safely managed sanitation, and educate about the struggles they face. In a nod to WTD, this blog post will discuss gender inequality within the WASH sector - something that is perhaps not spoken about as often as it should be and was the theme for 2014 WTD.

Sexual and Gender Based Violence 

A harsh and horrible reality for women living in urban slums is sexual and gender based violence (SGBV), of which most occurs when "someone is using a toilet, bathing and/or maintaining their menstruation". Rates of rape (36%) were much higher in the Kibera slum than the 14% averagge across Kenya - why is this the case? 

Essentially, the shared sanitation facilities (SSFs) that have been constructed in an attempts to tackle the issues in the WASH sector have failed women (figure 1).

Figure 1: A shared sanitation facility Source: The Guardian

The inaccessibility of SSFs is a real problem for women. Firstly they are usually located far away from homes, meaning that women (particularly at night) fall victim to SGBV when walking alone at night. Furthermore, Mathare charges for the use of SSFs (between $0.03 - $0.10) which disproportionately affects women who use toilets more often than men. Burdened further by the costs of menstruation products, women have also become victims of coercive sex work as a last resort to fund what should be a human right. 

The sanitation needs of girls and women are particularly neglected in the planning of SSFs. Where they are often over burdened and thus not maintained properly - broken locks/doors contribute to the lack of privacy which burden girls and women managing menstruation especially. A particularly horrifying consequence of this is the branding of girls as "ripe for sexual activity", subjecting young girls to SGBV. 

It's a human right, PERIOD.

Every woman has a period, yet so many in Sub-Saharan Africa don't have access to menstrual products or facilities, and when they do are faced with the issue of disposal.

Figure 2: A menstrual cup Source: HuffPost

Menstrual cup are a relatively new tool introduced to the WASH sector that seeks to address the problems related to menstruation and to a certain extent, SGBV. A menstrual cup is a medicine-grade silicone cup that is inserted into the vagina to collect menstrual waste (figure 2). The Ruby Cup Foundation has distributed over 8,000 menstrual cups in Kenya, to combat period poverty.

The cups solve the need for privacy and disposal mechanisms as they offer up to 12 hours of protection per use (reducing the number of toilet trips required), and can also be emptied and cleaned in the shower - eliminating the reliance on communal SSFs to change and dispose products. Furthermore, each cup has a potential lifespan of 10 years which relieves stress in communal waste systems and proves cost effective for the user. 

"We would never distribute Ruby Cups in a region where the girls would be shamed or punished by their communities for using a menstrual cup".

This is a direct quote from the Ruby Cup website that implies that there are some women who cannot and will not use the menstrual cup for religious reasons. So what should women in these communities do? The cultural norms in urban slums do not necessarily corroborate with Western inventions, rendering them useless - regardless of how many of other issues it may solve. Thus, we cannot be solely reliant on such tools: don't women deserve safe, private spaces and disposal systems anyway?

What can be done?

In my opinion, the needs to be a two-pronged approach in order to effectively tackle the inequalities faced by women in the long term. 

1. There must be more education surrounding menstruation and SBV. Visibility to gendered issues and breaking down stigmas on perceived "women-only" issues will perhaps be catalytic in the push for equality in the WASH sector. 

2. Girls and women need to be actively involved in all stages of decision making. Providing tools whether they be SSFs or menstrual cups as a "gift" may be completely incompatible or inappropriate for women (as discussed) and the best way to tailor appropriate solutions is to surely get the women involved themselves.