Look beyond flushing the gender sanitation problem away

Today is World Toilet Day, declared by the United Nations (UN) on the 19^th November every year to raise awareness for SDG goal 6 to achieve global sanitation for all by 2030. The UN report released a figure drawing a comparison between the ownership of mobile phones that accounts for 6 out of 7 billion people world-wide compared to 4.5 billion people with access to toilets (Eliasson, 2013), which prompted the launch of this campaign (Worstall, 2013). This gives an insight into the perceptions of sanitation in modernity that is limited to focus on increasing the distribution of the toilet as a tangible object. However, as highlighted from the previous post, the need to break cultural barriers which overlaps with the need to create an inclusive environment for women in sanitation projects are significant barriers in ensuring equal gender sanitation. In ensuring the incorporation of equal gender perspectives in the centre of water and sanitation strategies requires the involvement of men and women on a local level and the government and international organizations on a national level to instigate policy changes.

WASH in Education

Promoting access to gender sensitive sanitation begins by inducing long-term behavioral change in sanitation practices and this is through recognizing the importance of Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in schools. The 3 core values of WASH should be understood for its high interdependence with one another, ie. without the provision of latrines, this will lead to contaminated water source from the poor handling of disposing human waste, hence without the availability of clean water the practice of healthy sanitation is not possible.

The following figures (1.0, 1.1, 1.2) shows the distribution of WASH facilities at schools across the East and South African Regions (ESR).

Figure 1.0 Percentage of primary schools with adequate water supply (Unicef, 2012)

Figure 1.1 Percentage of Primary schools with access to adequate sanitation (Unicef, 2012)

Figure 1.2 Percentage of primary schools with adequate access to hand-washing facilities (Unicef, 2012)

These figures are summarized as follows:

·      Schools with access to adequate water supply: 53%

·      Schools with access to adequate sanitation: 45%

·      Schools with access to hand-washing facilities:13%

·      Girls latrines at schools without doors: 52%

(Unicef, 2012)

This represents the high number of schools lacking WASH facilities, in which children with disabilities and girls are disproportionately affected. This is a concerning matter as sanitation behavior is shaped by the physical environment.

In the provision of WASH, aside from projects initiated by NGOs, this lies heavily in the role of the public sector in prioritizing management and national budgets for WASH. For instance, in Tanzania, as part of the National Plan, the government allocated specifically $7 billion for WASH in schools. However, for many countries in the ESR, the budget for WASH is incorporated with grants with other school facilities such as desks and chairs, leaving often very little money for WASH provision. Furthermore, there should also be a clearly defined government agency responsible for WASH (often the responsibility of the Ministry of Education and for Nambia, it is the Ministry of Agriculture), in which at the moment only 7/13 of the ESR countries have. However as for the remaining 6 ESR countries, this responsibility remains unclear.

Aside from the basic provision of WASH facilities, it is also pronounced by sustaining WASH behavior through education. This begins by debunking the cultural stigmatization of females and their menstrual health through integrating puberty & WASH, including Menstrual Health Management (MHM) into school’s curricula separate for boys and girls. In a study undertaken in Ghana where girls enrolled in schools between 12-18 years of age were given sanitary pad education on period management, this reduced 9% of absenteeism of girls at schools after 5 months of the study (Unesco, 2014). In a Wateraid project, the students also formed a WASH club in sharing the values of sanitation and hygiene learnt through the mediums of drama and music. This is a stepping stone to increasing the confidence of girls and reducing gender based discrimination in changing the attitudes of men towards women in the participation of sanitation facilities and hence a step closer to achieving gender equality in sanitation.

Making WASH gender responsive

Woman as the primary users of WASH on a household level, their knowledge on water and sanitation are paramount, for instance they are able to identify suitable sites for hand dug wells and bore holes, and notice water quality issues before men does due to their role as main collectors of water. Gender sensitization is crucial for men to recognize the values of involving women as active participants in the design, construction and maintenance throughout all stages of water and sanitation projects.

To facilitate gender sensitization, focus group discussions should be led for women and men to share their stories of how women from other villages in their participation has benefitted the community and to recognize the different needs for WASH between both genders. For instance the Live& Learn project in Fiji enabled men’s changing attitude towards women in decision-making and leadership roles(Tear Fund, 2016).

“Men acknowledge the amount of work the women have done and their role. Men always talk. Women always do the work and are more committed to get things done. They take more responsibility. The change is the recognition and that they [men] see they need to share the labour and recognise the work and contribution.” Male respondent form the Live& Learn Project (Tear Fund, 2016)

Gender sensitization should further open its front line professions for women particularly in technical roles such as hydro geologists and engineers, and leadership roles in committees. In Ghana, during the promotional stages of sanitation designs, information is delivered by the District Assemblies (DA) to the members of the rural community through consultations and meetings. However, often the DA visited rural communities at times of inconvenience for women hence their low attendance during meetings. Through opening professional services to women, when women receive information from other female professionals, this will be easier to identify common problems and solutions regarding water and sanitation. Furthermore research shows that water policies and services across 44 water projects in Africa and Asia sustain longer from the engagement of both men and women (UNDP, 2006). 

For instance, when Maria Mutagamba (Figure 2.0), served as the Ugandan minister of water, her 5-year gender strategies in the water sector integrated women’s concerning issues on water and sanitation and encouraged women to participate in committees resulted in safe water access in Uganda to have risen by 10% within 2 years (Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council, 2018).

Figure 2.0 Maria Mutagamba, “Mama WASH Africa”

Revising national standards for better sanitation planning

National standards for sanitation should also be revised for better gender sensitive planning of sanitation facilities. At the moment, the national standards for sanitation in many ESR countries are set by the ratio of toilets to the number of people (Figure 3.0). However, this does not take into account the standard of facilities for toilets to maintain hygiene, for instance the availability of soap for washing hands, running water in basins and also facilities for MHM. These standards can be revised to ensure the sanitation facilities are gender sensitive such as measuring the ratio of segregated toilets available to both genders separately, such as in the example of Uganda in figure 3.0 and the availability of sanitary towels or sanitary bins available for each toilet. Revising such national standards could allow governments to identify better planning of sanitation facilities that gives implication into quality of facilities and the sufficiency for female-friendly toilets.

Figure 3.0 National WASH standards measured in ESR countries

To sum up, this blog highlights achieving gender sensitive sanitation that promotes dignity and hygiene by understanding the synergies between water, sanitation and hygiene. This is through shaping a WASH friendly environment, integrating WASH (and MHM) into education and promoting gender sensitization strategies to enable the community to recognize the invaluable role women play across all levels of water and sanitation projects. This requires local level engagement and particularly the role of governments in integrating WASH into national policies, such as education and to national standards to ensure the planning of gender sensitive sanitation facilities.