A Gendered Perspective on Water and Sanitation

In this post I want to focus on how issues of water and sanitation are gendered. I particularly want to address how sanitary facilities affect women’s experience of menstruation, and how these in turn create specifically gendered challenges to development.

Within development literature, there is a strong argument in support of female empowerment. One particular line of argument emphasises the need for increased female education as many developing countries see a greater level of education among the male population compared to the female (DFID 2005). Multiple reasons are used to explain this situation. The distribution of domestic housework is one proposed reason, which is also intimately linked to the issue of water and sanitation. Women in East Africa are expected to do the majority of domestic housework, which also includes collecting water for the household. Household responsibilities are time consuming and can involve hard physical labour that limits ability to attend school (World Bank 1999). Findings from Thompsonet al. (2000) suggest that this issue is further exacerbated in East Africa, as water collection time has increased over the past 30 years:

“…the total time spent collecting water at the source each day increased more than three times, from 27.7 minutes in that late 1960s to 91.7 minutes 30 years later […] the most important explanatory factor is the increase in time spent queuing for water” (Thompson etal. 2000:48).

The increased collection time particularly affects women and children that are in charge of water collection. This detracts time from other activities such as going to school.  

Another reason, which might help to explain the educational gender-gap is women’s experience of menstruation. This is a topic of research that only recently has been explored in development literature, but sanitation concerns are at the heart of these new understandings, and thus very interesting to consider here. The main assertion is that young women in numerous ways are prevented from attending education due to their monthly period. In the bullet points below I have tried to explain some of the reasons why this is the case:

·    Due to limited economic resources many women have insufficient access to sanitary towels. This increases the risk of bleeding through clothes, which can simply prevent girls from leaving their house until the bleeding has stopped. If at school, signs of bleeding are likely to result in mocking and bulling creating a hostile learning environment (Bax 2014)

·   Poor sanitation facilities in schools make it much more difficult for young female students to change and wash in privacy – again this creates an obstacle for women to attend school and arguably highlights the “gender discriminatory nature of the school environment” (Sommer 2010:526)

·   Menstruation increases fears of rape and unwanted pregnancies. Parents in turn restrict their daughters during their period. Sommer (2009) finds that many girls have to be home by 6pm, which prevents them from getting study support from outside the household and prevents them from participating in group discussions and communal learning outside school hours.

Menstruation can thus be seen to create a host of barriers that prevent women from participating fully in education. In a study from Tanzania, young women were asked to draw their ideal school toilet. They emphasised a need for separate male and female facilities. Key elements to their design also included locks, creating a feeling of safety; running water inside the toilet booth, to enable easy hand washing; and good bins for disposal, to ensure continued freshness (Sommer 2010). Considering women’s experiences of menstruation highlights how issues of sanitation are gendered. It also emphasises how the need for basic services is experienced very differently by different groups of people.