19 % Indian Households Without Toilets: What It Says About Women's Hygiene

The latest NHFS survey carried out between 2019 and 2021 highlights that women in India do not have access to toilets. The report said that the number of households with open defecation is highest in Bihar, followed by Jharkhand and Odisha. The NFHS-5 also discovered that 69 percent of households use an improved sanitation facility, which prevents people from coming in contact with human waste so that they do not catch diseases like cholera, typhoid and the like.

India, although declared an Open Defecation Free by the government in 2019, the latest NFHS survey conducted in 2019-21 showed that 19 per cent of households do not even use any toilet facility. According to the NFHS survey, 11 per cent of urban households use a shared facility, contrasting with seven per cent of rural households.

Women And Toilet Facilities

A 2017 study conducted by the World Bank said that women are hit hardest owing to lack of access to toilets and handwashing materials. Their health gets compromised particularly during menstruation. The study further says that not only do women suffer during menstruation and childbirth, but also bear the burden of hours collecting water when it is not easily accessible.

This causes them to miss school and even risk rape and harassment. To address this issue, women and girls are stressed upon the Sustainable Development Goal. Seeking to achieve access to adequate hygiene and put an end to open defecation, set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, the SDGs paid special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations.

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According to the World Bank’s database, the lack of a place to defecate, and likely, the lack privacy for menstrual hygiene management (MHM) encountered half a billion women globally, or 13% of all women. A lack of toilets at work and at home has severe impacts on businesses. The scarcity also causes poor health and exhaustion among the workforce. People's health and productivity  can contribute greatly by investing in good toilets in workplaces. It will also strengthen economies. 

On the contrary, the UN declared in 2010 that access to water and sanitation are human rights, even though people around the world are a long way from realising them. According to its estimates, 2.6 billion people live without proper sanitation and over 1.1 billion people have no sanitation facilities at all.  As a result, they defecate behind bushes, in fields, plastic bags, ditches or along railway tracks.

Catarina de Albuquerque, UN expert on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, argues, “Women and girls disproportionate face risks of sexual violence when they have to walk long distances to sanitation facilities, especially at night.” Girls are also at risk if they are unable to wash in private. A review by the NCBI identified 4 overarching themes linked to open defecation. These include increased risk of sexual exploitation, threat to women’s privacy and excrement linked infectious diseases. 

Not only is the situation of no access to toilets an infringement of women’s basic human rights but it is also an indication of failure of the health and social care authorities that are accountable for ensuring fundamental hygiene facilities. 

Open defecation is also a topic taboo and many women from low-income countries struggle with managing their bodily functions. But the health and social needs of women remain unmet and the unavailability of toilets in households continually side-lines the issue. In absence of toilets at home, women are forced to use open defecation areas or shared toilets within a community. Many women are assaulted by men when they are out in secluded areas going about their personal business. The Bio-Med journal report of 2016 in its report showed that women who use rail tracks or open defecation areas are twice as likely to get raped compared to the ones who use toilets at home. This proves that the lack of toilet facilities at home causes yet threat to women's safety. 

Views expressed are the author's own.