Cinderella and the missing slipper : sanitation and gender

Sanitation is sometimes called the Cinderella of the drinking water and gender the missing slipper. To enhance sanitation, agencies in developing countries are shifting from a supply-driven to a demand-responsive approach, focusing directly on households or helping communities establish local sanitation management programmes. Different sanitation programmes from different countries, which aim at closing the sanitation gap, and have initially been supply-driven and construction-oriented are also highlighted: how they shifted from supply-driven to demand-responsiveness. A number of sanitation programmes now focus on creating the conditions under which they can create self-sustaining local sanitation programmes which respond to demand. In terms of financing projects, money goes to promotion, to the development of a range of models adjusted to differences in economic demand, and to training, monitoring and evaluation. Agency staff and community members, work together to mobilise sanitation demand or create demand where it does not yet exist. Most of the community members are women. A gender approach to ensure that the programme information reflects the differences in demand of women and men and reaches and mobilises both categories has effectively been used. Some community organisations manage the local sanitation fund and acquire materials in bulk. Projects also monitors progress, quality of construction, subsequent hygienic use and maintenance of the completed latrines. In communities in which local authorities are responsible for water and sanitation, women have petitioned successfully for improvements in sewerage, sanitation and waste removal. In other villages, women dug several drainage pits in the main village street overnight to demonstrate their need.