The struggles for women’s empowerment and improving sanitation are both harmed by using patriarchal messages to encourage construction of toilets.
A patriarchal toilet promotion message in a village in Uttar Pradesh
“Successful” sanitation promotion in Rajasthan has been receiving much attention lately, especially in media stories (see here and here, for instance). There is certainly much to learn from recent initiatives in some districts of Rajasthan to promote the use of toilets in villages: a lot of attention and importance was accorded to the issue by district collectors in these districts; the focus was on behaviour change activities rather than toilet construction; latrine pits were made of cheap cement rings, rather than expensive brick; and attempts were made to teach villagers how latrine pits work.
The chief reason why open defecation is so rampant in India is that rural Indians do not want pit latrines, which are a safe sanitation solution and which are used around the world. This is because of anxieties related to emptying pits once they fill up. These anxieties are driven by notions of purity and pollution, rooted in India’s centuries-old caste system. Emptying a pit in which faeces have decomposed is safe, but most rural Indians would not touch such a pit, because they consider it impure. The government promotes these pit latrines without explaining how the pits work, and rural Indians think that these latrines are “impure, “fake”, “temporary”, or for “emergency use” only – they don’t want these “small” pits to fill up.
In Rajasthan, since the water table is very low, people can build deeper pits without worrying about contaminating water sources with faecal germs, while the use of cement rings allows these larger pits to be constructed relatively cheaply. These deep pits cannot be constructed in states like Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, because the water table is not that low there. Still, the fact that in Rajasthan, district sanitation campaigns tried to address villagers’ anxieties about latrine pits shows that they identified the problem correctly.
Despite this, a disturbing aspect of Rajasthan’s toilet promotion activities has been the use of patriarchal messages to promote the construction of toilets. These messages are likely to derail the sanitation campaigns in the state, while also reinforcing the patriarchal social norms widely prevalent in the state.
Impact of patriarchal messages
In our empirical research on sanitation and health in rural India, we have become used to seeing patriarchal messages to promote the construction of toilets. Slogans like “Bahu betiyan bahar na jayein, Ghar mein hi shauchalay banvayein” [“Daughters and Daughters-in-law shouldn’t go outside, build a toilet inside your house”] are now painted across walls and toilets in rural India. Through these slogans, men are encouraged to build a toilet not because it will prevent the spread of disease and germs, but because their patriarchal values should not allow women to go outside the house.
Further, the idea of ghoonghat, or keeping women covered, is used in behaviour change messages in rural Rajasthan. In large banners and in yearly calendars, in government offices and on village walls, the Rajasthan government uses a picture of a woman carrying a lota filled with water. In the poster, the woman is being asked by her daughter, “Maa, ghar mein ghoonghat tera saathi, fir kyun shuach khule mein jaati” [“Mother, when you cover your head inside the house, how come you go in the open to defecate”]. The poster and the slogan use patriarchal logic to point out the inconsistency between practicing ghoonghat and defecating in the open.