World Toilet Day 2020

Source

What is World Toilet Day?

As it was world toilet day on the 19^th November, I decided to make it the focus of my blog this week. World toilet day celebrates toilets and raises awareness of the fact that there are 4.2 billion people living without sufficient access to sanitation. It is also about achieving Goal 6 of the SDG- water and sanitation for all by 2030 (UN 2020). One thing that shocked me as I was researching this topic, was that more people have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet (Thieme 2018)! Shocking!

The need for sanitation is especially important this year due to the Covid19 pandemic. This makes the lack of sanitation even more concerning because it shows how small things such as washing your hands are so important in preventing the virus from spreading (BBC 2020). The theme for 2020 is sustainable sanitation and climate change, emphasising the need to maintain health and security whilst encouraging the sustainable handling of human waste (World toilet info 2020). 

 

Summary of the gendered implications of sanitation

The impacts of insufficient sanitation disproportionately affects women and girls (Pouramin et al 2020), and it is those from vulnerable ethnic and socioeconomic communities who are disproportionately burdened, and thus reinforcing the deeper gender inequalities (Hellum et al 2015). It impacts a females dignity- being able to manage ones’ bodily functions in a private and respectable way (Thieme 2018); their safety- psychological, sexual and physical violence is something that females go through, since the lack of sanitation means women have to travel a certain distance in order to access facilities such as toilets, even at night which means that they are potentially susceptible to assault and violence (Amnesty international report 2010). Finally there is the issue of education, since the absence of sanitation, particularly for women going through puberty and so their hygiene management cannot be addressed and unfortunately prevents them from attending (WHO 2010).

The Value of a toilet

As highlighted, it is shocking that access to basic sanitation- even just a toilet, is so low. World toilet day emphasises the value that a taken for granted object, a toilet, has. It represents a symbolic material focus, emphasising how a tangible object can be used to address issues surrounding water, poverty and sanitation. Companies have innovated toilets to encourage better sanitation in cities with limited sanitation facilities. For example, in Nairobi, there is the IKOtoilet, created by the company Ecotact, which is essentially a pay-per-use toilet, which also work alongside micro-entrepreneurs (Thieme 2018). There is the ‘Fresh of Life Toilets’ created by Sanergy and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, in which toilets don’t require connection to water and sewer infrastructure, but rather the use of replaceable cartridges with mobile waste collectors and local residents operating the facilities (Thieme 2018).

Fresh of Life toilet: source

IKO toilet:source

These innovations of various forms of toilets shows how, a toilet has become a mobilisation device of issues surrounding sanitation as well as potentially binary gender norms (Thieme 2018). However, these issues, are in fact much deeper, and cannot just be solved by implementing more toilets. In 2008 an IKOtoilet was installed in Mathare, a slum in south eastern Kenya (Musembi 2015) yet this is the first and only installation till date, which is not enough for a densely populated slum such as Mathare, as well as being badly located in a rather inaccessible area of the slum (Thieme 2018). In addition, the cost of running the ‘fresh life toilets’ were high, and there were issues surrounding sustainable management (Thieme 2018).

From the examples illustrated above we can see toilets serve a good purpose in mobilising issues surrounding sanitation, but it should not be the only thing to reply upon. Furthermore, these issues cannot be reduced to a toilet, and innovating and installing them, but rather, requires us to research deeper into intersectionality in relation to water, and changing sociocultural attitudes. Thus, World Toilet Day, it is good for highlighting issues surrounding sanitation, but cannot be the answer to the entire sanitation problem. 

Conclusion

I want to wrap up this post with a TedX talk by Isha Ray based on her experiences in rural India. She reiterates the sanitation issues, that I discussed earlier that women face and talks about menstruation which will be the focus of my next post. This video perfectly encapsulates the gendered nature of sanitation by highlighting the importance of a toilet for gender equality.