Public toilets; The Challenges that Women and Girls Face

Public toilets; The Challenges that Women and Girls Face

By 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG #6, aim to reach everyone with sanitation, and halve the proportion of untreated wastewater and increase recycling and safe reuse. Poor water and sanitation cost developing countries around $260 billion a year, 1.5 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP), while every dollar invested could bring a five-fold return by keeping people healthy and productive[1].

Lack of sanitation affects some 2.5 billion people particularly women, who face not only disease but missed school, public shame, and attack[2]. World toilet day is observed on 19^th November annually having few people aware of the day to highlight problems faced by people in the world that do not have access to proper sanitation. Theme for 2017: ‘Wastewater’.

This article will focus on public toilets in Kenya and the challenges that women face. Public toilets are small rooms constructed at convenient places that are meant for the use by generally everyone. Public toilets are one of the social amenities that have come in as good initiatives to help our women to respond to the call of nature. In the past as opposed to when men would find it easy to release themselves anywhere, women had always had challenges and thanks to the public toilets they could have a sense of privacy.

As we appreciate the public toilets though, there are challenges that women face when in use of the toilets;

Hygiene; women and girls are sensitive when it comes to their reproductive systems. Lack of proper hygiene and sanitation at the public toilets leave women vulnerable to different bacterial infections and this discourages most of them from using the toilets which are worse when women are during their menstrual periods. Broken flushes, lack of anti-bacterial dispensing soap, sanitary towels being all over and not well covered.

Impact on economic growth; women spend a lot of time in queues just to use the toilets. Men and women are given the same number of toilets but men tend to have urinals in addition. They miss out on very important conversation, they get late on important meetings and they end up losing a lot of time if accumulated together which would have been used for more productive things. The sight of long queues discourages women to use the facilities. Work places that do not have good toilet facilities, women are forced to go in search of toilets which affects the business considering the number of hours they spend in the toilets.

According to a desk study carried out by the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) in 2012, poor sanitation costs the country, Kshs 27 billion annually, equivalent to US$324 million. This sum is the equivalent of US$8 per person in Kenya per year or 0.9 per cent of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

Accessibility; one of the key issues to consider. Toilets need to be at the center for easy accessibility of women. Being in hidden places leaves the women with the fear of being sexually assaulted or attacked.

Vulnerable groups; these are persons with special needs. Public toilets most do not have facilities that cater for their needs. They have to get a helper to ease their struggle in the use of the toilets. Considering the stigma that they face from the other women community when they take a lot of time to use the facility. People with special needs tend to restrict themselves on the amount of foods and fluids that they take to control their need to use the toilets when they are out of their homes which in the long run affects their health.

Sub-standard resources; most public washrooms lack adequate resources for example most lack a bathrooms, have low supply of toilet paper, water and soap, lack of sanitary towel bins, lack of emergency sanitary towel supply in the toilets, hence they do not function to effectively meet the needs of the public. This mostly affects women because cleanliness and hygiene is one of their gender roles and women are expected to always exhibit a certain degree of cleanliness. For example, during menstruation a woman can accidentally soil their clothes and may be in need of a bathroom in order to refresh and might become very frustrated due to the inadequacy.

Public toilets also lack baby changing areas. This affects women because they are the primary care givers. Mothers with babies always have a difficult task finding a place when they need to change diapers for their babies in public.

Recommendations

· Proper hygienic conditions, ensure the toilets are regularly cleaned and

  disinfected to reduce the smell, facilities like bins for disposal of the sanitary

  towels, dispensing anti-bacterial soap.

· Have properly trained caretakers who are women to ensure the facilities are

  always clean.

· Having more toilets in easily accessible public places for women to ease the

  time they spend queuing.

· Communities in Kenya are encouraged to adopt the use of Community-Led total

  sanitation which is a methodology that empowers the community to take care of

  its own sanitation.

· Employers should strive to ensure that female employees have enough toilets

   which should always be in good condition for use.

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[1] http://www.un.org/en/events/toiletday/

[2] Laura Bliss November 7, 2014


By: Nyabena Susan; Gender Expert
      Bella Masanya; News Reporter KUTV
      Nicole Natallie: Sales and Marketing Expert Global