Sanitation for the Urban Poor – The Women’s Perspective Part I
This series of posts will focus on the characteristics and effects of basic sanitation provision in urban informal settlements as perceived by women.
As a part of my college credit requirements I decided to take a treacherous path for the Civil Engineer – a thesis research topic dabbling in the social sciences. I’ve always found the lack of social considerations in the civil engineering profession counter intuitive. To give some background: I studied Civil engineering because I genuinely like our species and want to solve all of our problems. I’m still realising that I probably won’t be able to do all that but I felt that at least, as a woman in my profession, I owed something to the women that “couldn’t”. I wanted to empower my own. This series is a chronicle of my journey and my pot of gold at the end.
Image courtesy of "no lands too foreign" on flickr
Since the onslaught of rapid urbanization the traditional picture in developing countries’ cities is one of inequality. The centre’s are bustling and rich, fuelled by the developed world’s need for natural resources; but on the outskirts the poor fight over sub-grade land with little regulation and government intervention. From Rocinha in Brazil to Kibera in Kenya the picture is the same. Under colonial regimes, segregation pushed non-Europeans to the edges of cities, close enough to work but far enough to be out-of-sight. After independence little changed for the average person and in a search for better living standards they rushed to these same areas. In South Africa, this process was heavily enforced by the apartheid regime. Townships designated for non-White city workers were specifically created to house the poorest. 17 years after South Africa’s first democratic election little has changed for the now called “previously disadvantaged” group.
What makes the upgrade of informal settlements so difficult is that the structure and characteristics are highly variable so that effective solutions must be dynamic as they are highly dependent on historic, social and regional contexts. This leads to a simplification of the areas leading to inadequate infrastructure designs, often resulting in the exclusion of a social group. Historically, cities have been designed for men therefore women now face enormous challenges when accessing certain basic services such as transport, water and sanitation.
Image courtesy of Sustainable Sanitation on flickr
Generally, you wouldn’t pick sanitation as an area of interest and gender biases can be found for all basic services from housing to transport; but I found it particularly intriguing that basic service providers put very little thought into the fact that men and women use the bathroom differently. Traditionally, women are responsible for the domestic activities and looking after children, thus they are often primary users of water; but also educate the family with regards to sanitation and hygiene. However, there is little data to show how women’s lives are improved by gender conscious design and how their needs regarding sanitation differ from those of men. I attempted to highlight this and provide and insight into which design features would have the greatest influence in improving women’s access to clean and safe sanitation facilities.
There are two main aspects that affect women’s approach to sanitation. Firstly, the physical, man-made space within which they live and secondly, the rules and customs imposed on them by the society that they are a part of. Therefore, it is key that engineers develop sanitation technologies that allow for these external influences.
A joint paper by COHRE, SDC, UN- HABITAT and WaterAid (2008) define the requirements of sanitation as:
- Safe to use
- Physically accessible
- Affordable, and
- Culturally acceptable.
This means that any sanitation programme must ensure that the facilities it provides meet these requirements. From the list it is possible to see that some of the criteria are highly subjective and that they may vary largely on regional and social contexts. Therefore the requirements of sanitation go beyond technical or tangible aspects. I used the above points as a guideline to present an analysis of the status quo in a township in Cape Town, by answering whether they satisfied the above criteria.
Image courtesy of Emanuelle baptist church of Brooklyn, NY on flickr
Based on my research I also decided that human settlement and society are most relevant to the South African urban informal settlement context, making the sanitation problem twofold. The human settlement refers to the man-made environment. It therefore also represents the conditions and limitations placed on settlements’ development, in particular sanitation upgrading, by what people have built. These restrictions are things such as physical space, settlement layout and density. Whereas society represents the intangible man-made structures, these are the rules and guidelines by which the society functions. These limitations are influenced by culture, religion and customs, and they reflect on the roles everyone, particularly women, are supposed to have within society. Therefore, the intangible aspects of sanitation are so important.
Armed with all this information I put the pieces together to map out how I would find the answers I needed. I created a series of questions coupling above mindset with the initial framework. The goal was to spell out the problems, pick up on subtle influences and thus present improvements. And so I began. Surely, I could easily formulate how the physical and social factors defined the characteristics of sanitation provision. Or so I thought…
[...] a little surprise that the presence of the Taliban regime in various Afghan areas has worsened the living conditions for women even [...]
[...] them to live together. After moving to Uganda, Nayima was rejected by her husband’s other wife, and she and her children were left on their own. She married for a second time and had six more [...]
[...] them to live together. After moving to Uganda, Nayima was rejected by her husband’s other wife, and she and her children were left on their own. She married for a second time and had six more [...]
[...] Sanitation for the Urban Poor – The Women’s Perspective Part II No Commentsby Mayra Hartmann on December 19, 2011 Tweet This series of posts focuses on the characteristics and effects of basic sanitation provision in urban informal settlements as perceived by women. Read Part 1. [...]
[...] it could lead to a proliferation of advertisements for abortion clinics on the airwaves seeking to take advantage of women in a very vulnerable situation. Source: unlikely ghost on [...]