Women as 'natural leaders' in CLTS

 “More than 70 per cent of the population in Eastern and Southern Africa (340 million people) have no access to basic sanitation services”. 

Despite the presence of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 6: to “ensure availability of clean water and sanitation for all”, practices such as open defecation (OD) pose a severe risk to achieving this goal. It is important to remember the context behind why this practice occurs: O’Keefe, Lüthi and Tobias (2015) remind us that colonial provisioning of sewerage systems is partly to blame for the current poor sanitation conditions, as it only serviced the elites. OD not only serves as a health risk, but as a privacy one too, particularly to women and girls: many of these women feel their privacy and dignity has been taken away, and the risk of sexual violence lurks too. To address this, I will explore how the revered solution: Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), gives women an integral role to play within their community.

Figure 1: SDG 6 which promotes clean water and sanitation for all

CTLS involves inducing feelings of disgust and shame within the community (Kar and Pasteur, 2005), where they realise, they are “eating each other’s shit” (Galvin, 2015) and are consequently ‘triggered’ to achieve ‘total sanitation’ (Bardosh, 2015). ‘Natural leaders’ (ibid) have a role in empowering and driving their community to achieve this goal. Women are well-placed to take on this responsibility alongside men as they are “generally the main users of water at the household level, and often responsible for family hygiene” (Tough et al, 2022). They usually establish a Sanitation Action Group (SAG), with the aim of receiving ODF status (Bardosh, 2015) through constructing safely managed latrines, and implementing handwashing practices etc (Tough et al, 2022). This process allows women to advocate for better sanitation, as before, they could only persuade their husbands to construct latrines (Adeyeye, 2011).The village of Chanda in Zambia experienced a high prevalence of waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea. In 2010 after the village was triggered, a SAG was established, composed of 6 women and 3 men, where the community observed sanitation and valued hygiene and proper sanitation. Now, all households in Chanda have a toilet and diarrhoea cases have reduced.

Figure 2: "Implementation of National Sanitation Campaign in Njombe District, Tanzania. Types A, B, C and D latrines are unimproved latrines, improved pit latrines, ventilated improved latrines and pour flash latrines connected to septic tanks, respectively" (Safari et al, 2019: 762)

However, within CLTS, the gendered division of labour may be a challenge: men tend to construct latrines, boreholes and make bricks [and own these sanitation facilities], whilst women fetch water and maintain hygiene management (Safari et al, 2019: 762). In Tanzania, the remote village Luhundwa had the highest mean distance to their water source at 927 m (Tough et al, 2022). Since women’s labour as water collectors in latrine construction (ibid), is needed, this adds more to the problem of water collection as time-consuming. Adeyeye (2011) discusses men in targeted communities mistake gender mainstreaming to benefit women only, which could lead to this unfair division of labour, and reluctance to help their female counterparts. I agree with Adeyeye, who promotes gender equity and mutual benefit instead, to improve WASH conditions and gender empowerment. 

 

 

 

 

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