Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Understanding Issues Involved in Toilet Access for Women -Aarushie Sharma, Asmita Aasaavari, and Srishty Anand

Understanding Issues Involved in Toilet Access for Women -Aarushie Sharma, Asmita Aasaavari, and Srishty Anand

Share this article Share this article
published Published on Aug 23, 2015   modified Modified on Aug 23, 2015
-Economic and Political Weekly

While insufficient sanitation facilities often get represented in statistics and are reported in the literature on urban infrastructure planning and contested urban spaces, what is often left out is the everyday practice and experience of going to dysfunctional toilets, particularly by women. By analysing the practices and problems associated with toilet use from a phenomenological perspective, this article aims to situate the issue in the everyday lives of women.

Aarushie Sharma (aarushie@gmail.com), Asmita Aasaavari (asmita.aasaavari@gmail.com), and Srishty Anand (anand.srishty77@gmail. com) were students of the Delhi School of Economics when they carried out the project on which this article is based.

This article is based on a research carried out as part of the Krishna Raj Fellowship 2013 granted by the Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. The authors would like to thank the Krishna Raj Fellowship for giving them this opportunity. The authors thank Janaki Abraham and Radhika Chopra for guiding them before, during, and after the fieldwork, and for their critical inputs, suggestions, and encouragement at various stages of it. The authors would also like to thank Ashwini Deshpande for her encouragement and support. They are very grateful to the people of the settlements for their cooperation and also for leaving them with more questions than they started out with.

The “No Toilet, No Bride” campaign initiated by former union minister Jairam Ramesh, now a CongressMP (Member of Parliament), the “Toilets First, Temples Later” slogan raised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) “Take the Poo to the Loo” drive indicate concerted efforts by the government and non-governmental organisations (NGO) to raise the issue of the lack of functional toilets in India. The problem of inadequate access to toilets assumes a serious dimension when it comes to the immense difficulties faced by women who have to make do with both inadequate and dysfunctional toilets in places not safe all the time. This translates directly into hazardous outcomes such as stunted growth, and diarrhoeal and urinary tract infections, among other chronic illnesses (Spears and Lamba 2013). Another important concern is the increasing number of incidents of sexual assault and violence on women in the vicinity of public toilets or fields used for open defecation.

This article seeks to situate the problem of toilet access for women in the urban slums of Delhi. While some lower-income settlements have public toilets, many others depend on open fields. Even where public toilets are available, the ratio of people to toilets is so lopsided that it thwarts the possibility of adequate toilet access for the majority. While the sight of men urinating against walls is quite usual in cities such as Delhi, there is silence about how women manage in their everyday lives with inadequate and dysfunctional sanitation facilities. This article aims to document and analyse the experiences and everyday practices women in lower-income settlements adopt to cope with the lack of functional toilets. By analysing the practices and problems associated with toilet use from a phenomenological perspective, this article aims to situate it in the everyday lives of women, in their day-to-day lived experiences in their neighbourhoods, workspaces and cities.

We seek to address the following questions. What are the problems that women face because of the lack of proper access to toilets? Are there public toilets in their neighbourhood and are they comfortable using them? When do they access a toilet during the day? Are there toilets at their workplace? How safe do they feel in going to the toilet and/or to the fields? What are the ways in which they negotiate their access to the toilet? What tactics and practices do they resort to?

The article, thus, revolves around two main arguments. First, it argues that while public toilets time and again emerge as “unsafe” spaces for women, there is a need to critically examine the safety discourse and address some infrastructural gaps to ensure the physical safety of women. Second, while the scarcity of functional toilets for women puts them in a helpless position, it is important to realise that these women are not always passive victims but active agents in negotiating their access to toilets. Unfortunately, some of the practices they adopt have adverse implications on their health.

The Field, Fieldwork and Toilets

The fieldwork for the study was conducted at four sites in Delhi—Janta Mazdoor Colony (JMC) (New Jaffrabad, near Seelampur); Bawana Resettlement Colony (Bawana); Jai Hind Camp (Kusumpur Pahadi) and parts of Masoodpur and Annanagar; and Sanjay Amar Colony (behind World Health Organization [WHO] headquarters, near ITO). Data was collected primarily through semi-structured interviews, interview schedules, and in-depth conversations with residents of these areas, supplemented by meetings and interviews with officials of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), resident and visiting doctors in these areas, and NGOs and civil society activists working there.

JMC in the Jaffrabad area of East Delhi is an unauthorised colony comprising mostly daily wage earners, plumbers, domestic workers, construction workers and petty shopkeepers. The houses are semi-pucca (permanent) to pucca, with hardly any space for light between them. While most JMC residents (Blocks A to E) have constructed personal toilets (with no septic tanks, leading to frequent blocking of the drainage), this option is unavailable to those living in small quarters, who depend entirely on a public toilet behind the colony, with two entrances, one for purush (males) and one for mahila (females).

Bawana in North-west Delhi is the city’s largest resettlement colony, housing communities evicted from Yamuna Pushta, Kusumpur Pahadi, Jahangirpuri, Vikaspuri and so on. The majority of the people here are daily wage earners. While some go to neighbouring areas of West Delhi to ply rickshaws, others go to marketplaces such as Azadpur or Keshavpur to sell vegetables. A few also work as labourers in factories in Bawana and Narela. The colony has two blocks, one old and one new. While all blocks have community toilet complexes (CTC), the old block CTCs are under the MCD and the new block ones under the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), though they are to be transferred to the MCD. The old block CTCs, which cater for a higher population, charge a fee and close at 11 pm, while the new block ones, used by fewer people, do not charge any fee but shut as early as 6 pm.

Annanagar and Sanjay Amar Colony are adjacent to the WHO office, and an overhead Delhi Metro track and railway line run through the slums, which have no physical separation between them. Migrants from all over, in particular, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh (UP), Bihar and Rajasthan, live in Annanagar. A large part of them are hawkers, rickshaw pullers and domestic workers. The joint cluster has only one CTC in Annanagar and it faces the problem of too many people. While residents of Sanjay Amar Colony rely on the CTC in Annanagar, they also have a makeshift toilet. This is actually a dilapidated mobile toilet, now stationary, with six cubicles divided between men and women. Most Annanagar and Sanjay Colony residents use the adjacent railway track for open defecation, this being the norm in Masoodpur as well.

Masoodpur, on Kusumpur Pahadi in Mahipalpur (near Vasant Kunj in South Delhi), is an illegal settlement on forestland. It has hundreds of people from UP, West Bengal, and Bihar, who work as rag pickers, domestic workers and daily wage labourers. Unlike the other three sites, Masoodpur has neither home/personal toilets nor public toilets and its adjoining fields serve the purpose.

The particularities of these sites, and their similarities when it comes to toilet use, bring out the various problems women face in negotiating access to toilets. We aim to highlight some of the most pertinent problems to do with basic toilet access and their implications. Section 1 discusses the implications of only using toilets at certain times and the sorry condition of toilets on women’s access and safety. Section 2 discusses the infrastructural gaps in public toilets and their effect in making the toilets unsafe spaces. Critically examining the discourse on safety, which rests on notions of family honour and shame, Section 3 argues that there is a need to look beyond the often-heard discourses on safety of women. Section 4 discusses the health implications of open defecation and some of the unhealthy practices women willy-nilly follow. Section 5 analyses the politics of space and the way space is negotiated through the various tactics women resort to. The conclusion argues that women must be considered critical stakeholders when policy decisions on sanitation facilities are taken, lest they become victims of their own strategies in manoeuvring access to toilets.

1 Whims of Attendants

    It is very dangerous to visit the community toilet at night. We eat less, drink less water,control our bladder and manage for as long as we can to avoid going to the toilet.

    —Vimla Devi, 40, JMC (translated from
    Hindi, names have been changed)

    I visit the community toilet only once. I feel scared and embarrassed in going to the toilet alone. The environment of this place is not safe. Whenever I have to go,

    I wear my burqa and go either with my sister-in-law or mother-in-law.

    —Sayeeda, 23, JMC

The opening and closing times of public toilets varies from location to location and is often subject to the whims and fancies of toilet attendants. Toilets in JMC, Bawana’s old block, and Annanagar are open from 5 am to 11 pm. However, the new block toilets in Bawana close by 6 pm. What do women do if they need to go to the toilet at night? Women in Bawana new block have no other option but to visit the field. Unlike Bawana, JMC has no open spaces or surrounding green area. Most of our respondents said that they keep a check on what they eat at night, with some saying they skipped dinner to ensure that the need never arose. Women most often have little alternative to monitoring their fluid and food intake and practising control.

Most women have a particular time at which they prefer to go to the toilet. A majority of the women prefer to go to the CTCs in the morning. Sanjay Colony has only four cubicles for women, and the queuing begins at four in the morning. A good number also use the toilet in the early evening when it is not dark and crowded. Frequent power failure, combined with fused bulbs and tube lights, discourage women from using the toilet after dark. Masoodpur women defecate in the open, and a middle-aged woman said she prefers going at 10 pm because the dark allows her a degree of privacy.

Women are obviously unable to access toilets when they need to. Many of them visit the toilet only once a day. Given the unclean and unsafe environment of the toilet, the only exception was when they had a bad stomach. Not only married women but also teenage girls visit the toilet in Bawana only once. They are conscious of boys loitering around, and as a girl put it, “Accha nahi lagta” (Doesn’t look decent). While this is disquieting, the findings in Annanagar and Sanjay Colony are alarming. Here, the condition of toilets is so deplorable that a woman said she does not go to the toilet for three or four days at a stretch. Though she was aware it was unhealthy, she said the filth and stink forced her to delay till her body began giving up. Another respondent’s testimony was, “If you go to these toilets with as little as a sip of tea, you’ll vomit that too.”

Women adjust their biological need of going to the toilet in accordance either with the timing of public toilets or the feasibility of visiting it at a certain time and safety concerns. Most teach themselves to go to the toilet early in the morning, never go at night, and not go when the toilet is unbearably filthy. Going to the toilet thus becomes an everyday problem that requires some calculation and contemplation.

2 Gaps in Toilet Infrastructure

The low walls of the CTCs and little distance between men and women’s toilet cubicles are a perpetual security threat. Women in JMC and Annanagar complained that inebriated men climbed the walls of cubicles, and also abused and harassed them. In JMC, there have been instances when men, often armed with blades and dressed in a burqa, have hid in the women’s cubicles. Such cases are not uncommon in Bawana as well. Most women there complain of men peeping in and throwing pebbles at them while they use the toilet. All this is in addition to the harassment women face en route to the toilet.

Since the CTCs lack running water and mugs, women carry water, which makes their purpose obvious, and men loitering around the toilet intentionally try to make them spill the water. The very journey to the toilet belittles their privacy. Second, the location of CTCs does not contribute to women’s confidence. In JMC, it is behind the settlement, adjacent to barren land, away from the houses. Women fear that cries of help from here will seldom be heard. The absence of latches and adequate lighting are other infrastructural shortcomings. Often women hold the door from inside or station a friend outside the cubicle to guard their privacy. The small, makeshift toilet at Sanjay Colony has no lights, proper doors, or a concrete roof. Both women and men think the weak structure will collapse anytime.

In addition to these infrastructural problems, there are toilet attendants who behave in intruding and inappropriate ways, further discouraging women. There are no female attendants/supervisors in the toilets, and the majority of women are scared to use their own CTCs. Despite the MCD’s rule book specifying a male and a female attendant at each CTC, in reality, no female toilet supervisors are seen.

Absent Concerns

What is often left out of discussions on toilet infrastructure for women is bathing and urinating. We hardly came across women who used public toilets for bathing. A large majority of women in the settlements have put together a makeshift structure in their homes to bathe. At the time of the fieldwork, women in camps in Bawana, housing families who had yet not got a plot, did not have that option either—they bathe outside their camps with their clothes on.

One reason why women avoid bathing in public toilets is that there is no space to keep their clothes or to change. The women’s wing at JMC has no water, has a dysfunctional washbasin and dilapidated bathing compartments. The men’s wing has running water and many users. The supervisor explained that women do not need bathing compartments as most of them choose to bathe at home. This ignores that the choice is the effect of there being no provisions for women in the first place. Women are also fearful of being attacked by men. They calculate the potential risks bathing could pose to their safety, given broken latches, low roofs, and the supervisor’s unnecessary questions.

Another factor discouraging women from using the CTCs for bathing is the cost. The CTCs in Bawana’s old block charges Rs 2 for using the toilet; Rs 3 for bathing; and Rs 5 for washing. Women are now charged only once a day but it nevertheless proves to be burdensome, especially to large families. Most women use makeshift arrangements at home to bathe. Others go in groups outside the camps and bathe with their clothes on to avoid the cost of bathing in the CTCs. The cost of using toilets is a pertinent issue for men as well. Masoodpur residents, despite acknowledging the need for enclosed toilet spaces, argued that if the toilets came with charges they would rather not have them.

While most women use their makeshift bathing compartments at home for urinating, what do women do when they are out on the roads? There is a huge discrepancy between the number of public urinals for men and toilets for women. While toilets are always shut at night, urinals are usually accessible to men round the clock. This sends the message that women do not need toilets at night, and also when they are travelling or in public spaces. While our research findings suggest that a few women relieve themselves by hiding behind parked cars or bushes, the most shocking revelation was that a majority of the women we interviewed hardly urinate except when they defecate. They drink less water to avoid urinating, not realising this has adverse implications on health.

The problem is aggravated for pregnant and menstruating women who have to carefully calculate and map their journey, which discourages many from accessing public spaces altogether. Another fundamental shortcoming is that toilets do not take into account the needs of differently abled people. At the CTCs studied, there were cubicles for persons with disability, but they were invariably impossible to use.

Non-availability of toilets and/or limited access to them makes women visit fields (or nearby open spaces) for defecation. At all four sites, the weather plays an important role in determining their access to open fields. Insects and dogs are a major cause of trouble, and during the monsoon the ground becomes marshy. In summers, if trees and plants dry up, the problem is insufficient cover. As our informants said, this is a justifiable cause of worry because it increases their vulnerability. Masoodpur’s inhabitants have an area reserved for women closer to the settlement than for men. Unlike women of JMC and Bawana, the women here are less suspicious of local men, who they trust will adhere to the rules of spatial segregation, than they are of outsiders.

3 How Safe Are the Toilets?

    When a 50-year-old woman is so scared of these men, think what an 18-year-old girl goes through when she has to defecate in the open.

    —Mumtaaz, 50, Masoodpur

Women are often sexually harassed, teased, mocked at, or molested on their way to public toilets. As mentioned, women’s safety is threatened by factors such as poor/faulty design of the cubicles (open roofs letting men peek in); poor maintenance (broken latches and doors); inadequate lighting; men and boys loitering around the CTCs, and the absence of female attendants.

A predominant reason why the public toilet and the open field is seen as unsafe is the rising number of cases of sexual harassment when women use them. Philanthropy foundation Dasra (2012) published a study, which states that approximately 30% of women from the underprivileged sections in India experience violent sexual assaults every year because of lack of sanitation facilities. What is unfortunate is that more often than not the risk of sexual assault gets tied with questions of “honour and shame” of the woman and her family. Often cases of sexual harassment against young girls are not reported for fear of damaging the “image” of the girl and her family. During the fieldwork, the women of JMC said that the safety of their daughter(s) is always at the back of their minds; they hoped they would not be harassed or molested in the public toilet and bring “shame” on the family.

The notions of honour and shame are deeply internalised, and women said they are careful to avoid any “intrusion on their modesty” on the way to the toilet, which, according to them, would tarnish their families’ respectability. The price of maintaining such “respectability and honour” is high. Women’s preferred time, the place they choose to go to, the number of times they go, and the company they choose to take along reflect how they prioritise sexual safety over everything else.

While sexual assault is a pertinent issue, what needs to be addressed is the discourse on safety. The concern with safety of mothers, wives, and daughters often has very little to do with their physical safety and everything to do with their sexual safety. The rape of a woman is often more an issue of reputation than of physical harm (as families that choose not to file cases show). Women having internalised the value of sexual safety seem to pay less attention to other ways in which they may risk their physical safety. Restricting their fluid and food intake, avoiding the toilet after evening, restricting themselves to one visit a day, they prioritise their sexual safety over their physical safety and causing greater damage to their bodies. This emphasis on sexual safety also restricts women’s chances of taking risks and their access to public spaces (Phadke 2007).

The concern with making women’s access to toilets safer may be misled if it is limited only to the sexual safety of women. Safety concerns the level and extent of claim one feels for a space. The way the CTCs function, there are no such levels of claims. How can women in these areas feel they have the right to access the CTCs? How can they confidently do so? With years of conditioning going into manufacturing respectability, guarding sexuality cannot be easily challenged, but what can be made available to these women to make them begin to take risks is basic infrastructure.

Basic infrastructural changes such as the toilets remaining open all night, being well lit, their architecture being gender friendly, and toilets located in spaces that allow maximum access, along with female supervisors, will make them much safer. As Phadke argues, keeping toilets open all night for women would send the significant message that women have every right to be in public spaces.

4 Improper Access

In the three sites with CTCs, the experiences of women reveal that they feel nauseous using unclean toilets, but continue to because there are no alternatives. The lack of access to clean toilets and personal hygiene increases the chances of suffering from chronic constipation, severe white discharge, heavy menstrual bleeding (dysmenorrhoea), bladder inflation, stomach aches, kidney stones, skin problems, urinary tract infections, jaundice, nausea, psychological stress, anxiety attacks, and so on. This apart, it creates irreparable complications during pregnancy and postnatal recovery.

Our interaction with two doctors in Annanagar and Bawana reveals that white discharge is the most common problem among women. Among other reasons, doctors attribute this to women not washing their privates properly after going to the toilet. Due to having to carry water containers, most do not use water when they urinate. This is aggravated during menstrual periods. Women also throw sanitary napkins in the field or stuff them in latrines. As a result of using dirty toilets, women become prone to contracting urinary tract infections, and approach doctors only after their ailment becomes severe. Women also avoid relieving themselves. This has serious consequences on their health because they avoid drinking water and hold in their urine as long as possible.

Children use spaces near settlements to defecate—open gutters right outside their houses, near parks and playgrounds, and adjacent to streams and water sources, thereby contaminating their surroundings and drinking water sources. For the most part, the open spaces used for defecation are also the only open spaces for children to play in. Regular exposure to faecal matter and drinking contaminated water transmits diseases such as diarrhoea, and parasitic and worm infections. Even when diarrhoea does not kill, it severely debilitates, making children more susceptible to acute respiratory infections and chronic under-nutrition. The cost of treating it drains family finances, denying them resources for education and nutrition. According to a 2015 survey by the UNICEF, decreasing immunity in children in their early years because of sanitation-linked diseases significantly hampers their cognitive development, with a lifelong effect on growth and progress.

5 Negotiating Access

While circumstances compel women to manage with whatever little is available, it is important to recognise that women are not always passive victims in such situations. While these situations limit their claim to toilets, they constantly evolve creative ways to access toilets.

Railway tracks, behind bushes, behind parked cars, open spaces, urban jungles, near nalas (drains)—these are the spaces where many women attend to the “call of nature.” They try to claim these spaces and employ mechanisms to negotiate their terms with them. Building on Certeau’s analysis of the practices of everyday life,

These spatial practices may appear foreign to the ‘geometric’ or ‘geographical’ spaces of the planned city; but these are the practices which fundamentally constitute the numerous ‘ways of operating’ in the city (1984).

Where access is denied, women are forced to take advantage of opportunities to relieve themselves; that is, they often resort to what Certeau calls “tactics” to challenge the “totalising landmark” of the city in their own way.

Apart from toilets in their neighbourhood, women are denied access to toilets at workplaces. Women of JMC working as domestic workers in neighbouring Subhash Park said there is a lot of prejudice among employers on whether their servants can use their toilet. If they are allowed access to toilets, it is on the condition that they clean them. Women in Masoodpur, who work as domestic helpers in Vasant Kunj, are at times told to go back to their jhuggi (hut) to relieve themselves. In such situations, some relieve themselves behind parked vehicles near the residential complexes, others try negotiating with security guards of the apartments to use their toilets. Many a time, they use their employer’s toilet when nobody is noticing. This calls for prudence, discretion, tact, and opportunism. As Certeau argues, “Tactic depends on time—it is always on the watch for opportunities that must be seized on the wing’’ (1984: xix), and this is exactly what these women try to do.

Some of these tactics appear as regular practices after being routinised. Often, inhabitants of unauthorised colonies demarcate spaces for open defecation so that men and women avoid coming in each other’s way. This informal rule is gradually transformed into a daily practice and is strictly followed in some places, such as in Masoodpur and Annanagar. Another practice is to visit the toilet in company. Amid threats to their safety, going to the CTCs in the company of other females provides a certain psychological security. It also serves another purpose. Toilets turn into social meeting points for women, and the walk to and from them creates a certain sociality among them.

The negotiation of women’s access to the toilet at home, at the workplace, or in a public space is a constant improvisation. They “move about spatial elements, reinvent their spaces where none was planned, and thus transform and abandon spatial elements. These spatial practices concern everyday tactics, that is, they move from structure to action” (Certeau 1984). Their movement and experiences are what the planned city tries to hide—but those deprived of these spaces carve out their own practices in its very interstices.

City panning and infrastructure tends to invisibilise women from public spaces. It thus becomes important to recognise that women do exist in public spaces, that they do need to relieve themselves as much as men, and that they are active agents who try to manoeuvre their access to toilets. These tactics show that they certainly need public toilets that are easily accessible and functional. Most critically, they show that for some women going to the toilet is something that requires constant deliberation. Many a times, when their tactics falter, they learn the practice of control. The effects of space on disciplining the body in a Foucaultian sense are starkly evident here. Women do not always see trespassers when they are out in the field to relieve themselves, but the headlights of cars or the sound of approaching men compels them to spring up and pull up their salwars (trousers) in a programmed manner. They even learn to control going to the toilet for days at a stretch. Gradually, their bodies become habituated to this, though they do not realise the health implications of their practices. At this point, they unknowingly become victims of their own practices.

6 Concluding Remarks

As new governments are formed, new policies debated, and new toilets opened, women plan what and how much to eat and drink, and where and when to go to the toilet. Unaware and oblivious of what sanitation policy comes along, they are the ones most affected by the decisions taken by the government, engineered by the municipality, and fashioned and refashioned by the toilet supervisors who lock and unlock the CTCs.

The literature and accounts on slums and resettlement lack narratives of women’s concerns over sanitation and toilet use. While a gendered approach to sanitation can be found in whatever little literature that exists, it invariably views women as passive victims unable to negotiate and appropriate social space to access toilets. One of the primary aims of this article has been to establish that women from lower-income settlements are not merely passive victims. They are agentive individuals, capable of negotiating access to space; however, it is achieved at the price of their health.

It can be argued that daily visits to the field or unsafe CTCs have gradually become routine. This paradox is perplexing and dangerous. Practices such as waiting for the dark to defecate, monitoring eating at night, and skipping the toilet for days at a stretch come with massive consequences to the health of these women. While women traverse the line from being victims to agents, they run the danger of becoming victims of their own agency. This re-victimisation has to be averted. As long as functional public toilets remain scarce, women and men will devise ways to deal with the problem, but some of these ways can have harmful consequences.

The interlinkages between sanitation, gender, sexual violence and space must be understood and further explored in academic and social policy discourses. At the same time, there is a need to look at the various ways in which the physical safety of women is threatened by inadequate infrastructure. The human and social handicaps that inadequate sanitation imposes on poor people, especially women, need to be recognised and greater priority should be accorded to improving their access to proper facilities. Yes, the city needs public toilets so that it stays clean, but it needs functional public toilets if people’s health, safety, and their access to the city are not to be jeopardised. Most critically, the city needs functional public toilets so that its women do not have to control the urge to visit the toilet for days. That will indeed be liberating.

References

Certeau, Michel de (1984): The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dasra – Cataylst for Social Change (2012): “Squatting Rights—Access to Toilets in Urban India,” http://www.dasra.org/pdf/SquattingRights_Report.pdf

Phadke, Shilpa (2007): “Dangerous Liaisons: Risk and Reputation in Mumbai,” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 42, No 17.

Spears, Dean and Sneha Lamba (2013): “Effects of Early Life Exposure to Sanitation on Childhood Cognitive Skills: Evidence fron India’s Total Sanitation Campaign,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No 6659.

Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-L, No. 34, August 22, 2015, http://www.epw.in/notes/understanding-issues-involved-toilet-access-women.html


Related Articles

 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

Im4Change.org हिंदी वेबसाइट का परिचय. Short Video on im4change.org...

Im4Change.org हिंदी वेबसाइट का परिचय. Short Video on im4change.org...

"Session 1: Scope of IDEA and AgriStack" in Exploring...

"Session 2: Farmer Centric Digitalisation in Agriculture" in Exploring...

"Session 3: Future of Digitalisation in Agriculture" in Exploring...

Objectives | About Us | Workshops | Disclaimer
share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close