WASH facilities can prevent gender-based violence, experts say

This week, public outcry has spread across India following reports of the alleged rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl. The incident allegedly took place after she went to collect water from a nearby crematorium. In 2014, two other girls in India were gang raped and killed after venturing into a field to urinate. And in Haiti, following the 2010 earthquake, it was reported that “open-air sanitary facilities, insufficient bathing areas, and lack of lighting at night intensified the risks of sexual violence” in camps for internally displaced people.

These are just a few examples of how inadequate access to WASH or WASH facilities designed without a gender lens in mind are leaving women and girls at risk of gender-based violence and even death.

“When WASH infrastructure for water and sanitation services are built [without] keeping in mind their needs, it’s problematic,” said Tasneem Balasinorwala, network officer and gender focal point at the Water Integrity Network.

According to the United Nations Population Fund, 1 in 3 women will experience physical or sexual abuse in her lifetime. That number increases for women in low- and lower-middle-income areas. And in humanitarian contexts, women and girls are even more vulnerable to violence while those with disabilities are doubly so, William Berbon, global WASH specialist at Humanity & Inclusion, said.

Tasks such as collecting water often fall to women and girls and long distances jeopardize their safety, Balasinorwala explained. As can searching for an outside toilet in the dark, not having gender segregated facilities, lockable doors, or a handwashing facility without a light.

According to a report by the Water Governance Facility, women can also feel pressured to flirt with water utility workers to prevent their connection from being cut off. And cases of coercive sex in exchange for water have been reported in Kenya, South Africa, and Colombia.

Even if an assault doesn’t take place, the fear of it can prevent women and girls using facilities, said Marni Sommer, assistant professor of sociomedical sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. This can lead to health issues and discomfort.

Experts Devex spoke to explained that approaching the design of, and access to, a WASH project or facility through a gender lens can help to reduce the risk of GBV and safeguard women and girls’ health and well-being.

“If we improve access to WASH services for people … specifically women and girls with disabilities, we might limit the abuse and violence to which they might be exposed,” Berbon said.

Improving an existing WASH facility

For existing facilities, Balasinorwala urged WASH practitioners to explore whether changes could be made to help prevent assault. These might include providing additional lighting around a pump, installing automatic water meters to eliminate the need for a utility worker to visit the home, or moving a facility closer to households.

“The location, design, maintenance, and materials supplied in WASH infrastructure all can contribute to providing a safe environment for women and girls — including those with disability — to access WASH,” Sarah Keener, senior social development specialist at the World Bank, told Devex in an email.

“WASH facilities should be equipped with soap, water, privacy … good lighting, ventilation, menstrual products, and a convenient and private way to dispose of menstrual waste,” she added.

Creating gender safe spaces nearby could also help women and girls share information related to sensitive issues such as sextortion, Balasinorwala said.

“But high rates of violence against women and girls in accessing WASH is part of a much larger societal challenge, and is often intertwined and driven by deeply held social norms,” Keener warned. “Thus, addressing this broader issue goes beyond the infrastructure to collaborating with our other key partners internally … as well as external partners and NGOs to shift norms among women and men, boys, and girls.”  

Safeguarding at the design phase

Consulting women and girls in the community, prior to the roll out of a new facility or project is also important.

The top-down approach in designing facilities has historically been a problem, Balasinorwala said. “You think the solution is something you’ve learned at school or seen somewhere else. For me, the basic requirement is that the people who have the need also will know what’s best,” she explained.

Sommer recounted an instance where, in Rohingya IDP camps in Myanmar, women disclosed that, although potentially designed to help, lighting around toilets led to men congregating there. To remedy this, lighting was provided elsewhere in the camp but such an intervention couldn’t have been implemented without talking to users of the facilities. “That’s why it’s so important to consult them at the beginning, middle, and afterward to find out if these interventions are meeting their needs,” Sommer said.

Often having this conversation at the local level can also help raise awareness on the issue of violence against women and girls, Keener said.

Helping men in particular to understand women’s realities when trying to access WASH facilities could go a long way in seeing them become champions. “In the menstruation space, some of our greatest champions are men because something clicked,” Sommer said. “That safety issue is similar. If you haven’t had to think about it [and] it doesn’t occur to you, why would you build it into design and consult the people who experience it the most?”

Beyond consultation, there is also a gap in women in leadership roles within the WASH sector.

In 2018, 80% of water utility staff hired were male. Having utilities better reflect the gender composition of their users could increase the possibility that issues of women’s and girl’s safety are actually heard, Keener said.

The Equal Aqua — created by the World Bank’s Water Global Practice — is one initiative working to tackle gender diversity and inclusion in utilities and water organizations by boosting female recruitment, retention, and promotion and helping women working in the space advance their careers.

In a guide for water managers — produced by The Integrated Water Resources Management on the benefits of including gender considerations in water management planning and practices — it recommends there be “explicit legal and policy recognition of women as users and managers of water” and that technical and managerial personnel are trained in gender analysis and participatory methods.

“If men are deciding it … they do not know the ins and outs of the daily struggle and strife that women have to go through,” Balasinorwala said. “They’re obviously not making the decisions based on that so you have to get those who are users as managers,” she said.

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