Appalling hygiene levels at public toilets force women and queer people to reduce liquid intake
A public toilet for women in East Midnapore, West Bengal. (Representative image) Photo: Wikimedia Commons
More than half women respondents, 53%, in a recent survey have said they feel unsafe when using public toilets in Kolkata due to fear of teasing, sexual harassment and the toilets’ filthy condition. They are dirty and often have no lights, door latches or running water.
Interestingly, the distribution of public toilets were found concentrated in affluent areas, catering to housemaids and drivers who are not allowed to use their employer’s facilities. The availability drastically reduces in marginalised and economically backward areas, further complicating matters from women daily wage earners, the survey pointed out.PlayNextMute
Titled, ‘Status of Public Toilets for Women and Trans/Queer People in Kolkata’, the survey was conducted jointly by Sabar Institute and Azad Foundation and released on Monday (September 1).
It highlights that 72% of women respondents said the pay-and-use toilets account for 10% of their income. Besides, 62% of respondents found toilets to be unfriendly to disabilities and exclusionary to women as they lack lactation and diaper changing stations.
The overall impact of disproportionate spatial distribution of toilets is impacting the mobility, productivity and earnings of women and queer persons, while appalling hygiene levels at the few available public toilet facilities are causing women and queer people to reduce their liquid intake.
“Discourses around urban planning hardly ever involve discussions about public toilets. Yet, one of the foremost barriers in participation of women in the workforce is the unavailability of public toilets,” Sabir Ahmed, Convener of Sabar Institute, told The Wire.
The survey involves 7,616 respondents from all wards of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). It has unearthed various layers of inequalities.
Ashin Chakraborty, who leads the research department of Sabar Institute, said that the survey exposes how the unavailability or unusability of public toilets is creating unique gender-based economic tensions. Speaking of the women engaged in informal sectors, he said, “Knowing that public toilets are not available or not in a usable condition, many of these women occasionally do not venture out to work.”
According to Chakraborty, this is creating a massive dip in women workforce participation rate, which is already under pressure as women have to contend with many societal barriers to step out and work. He adds that missing day wages also means a widening gender wage gap.
Speaking to The Wire, women’s rights activist Saswati Ghosh emphasises on this economic impact, citing how women are charged more at public toilets than men.
“I have been told it’s because women need water and men don’t,” she adds ironically. She also points out that dirty access ways to women’s toilets, mostly created by men urinating outside, the differential cost for using the facilities, and the fact that women feel unsafe in toilets at night, are causing them to use public toilets lesser and lesser.
Ghosh notes that it is a common practice among saree-clad economically backward women to urinate standing up anywhere because “there is nothing else to do.”
The study focused on women working in informal sectors whose professional style makes them key users of the public facilities. Even so, a huge disparity was noted in the availability of clean public toilets in heavy-footfall zones such as Howrah and Sealdah railway stations. These zones, recording million-plus transits per day, have grossly inadequate toilet availability.
Transgender activist Ranjitha Sinha recalls an incident at Sealdah station where women were displeased when they joined the cue for the toilet, “They told me to go to the male toilet and not add to the queue.” They recollect several incidents of trans and queer people getting teased and sexually harassed at public toilets.
“Transgender persons largely have no education and skills and have to stand at traffic signals to beg or go for sex work – they are outside all the day – where will they go to use the toilet?“ Sinha notes, urging the state government to take steps in installing queer-friendly toilets, inclusive not only by design, but also in restoring dignity in the community.
Chandrasmita Choudhuri, secretary of the Kolkata Chapter of All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA), recalls an incident during the ‘Reclaim the Night’ campaign on August 14, last year. She remembers that at midnight, thousands of women had hit the streets in Kolkata and other towns in West Bengal, protesting lack of women’s safety at night in the aftermath of the rape and murder of a junior doctor at the state-run RG Kar Medial College and Hospital in the state capital.
On a night-long vigil where doctors were on a hunger-strike at Esplanade, in the heart of Kolkata, transgender members among the protesters were stopped at the public toilet and told to go to the male one.
“Most trans and queer persons do not want to use the public toilet due to the male/female segregation,” Choudhuri adds.
The survey unearthed some key insights about how women are adapting to the paucity of clean toilets in the city horrifyingly by limiting their liquid intake while on the road.
Archana Munda, 40, who drives an app-based cab, confirms that this is a regular occurrence. She recalls a day when she went up to 10 hours drinking little to no water due to the unavailability of public toilets on her route. To complicate matters, she was menstruating at that time and badly needed to change her sanitary pad.
By the time she found a toilet, she was “in no state to get out of the car” because her clothes were stained at that point. In the survey, 94% reported a complete absence of facilities for disposing of sanitary napkins, and a gaping lack of basic hygiene products like sanitary napkins and handwash.
About 30% of respondents commented that public toilets are “dirty” and “very dirty”.
The restriction of liquid intake adversely impacts the health of women. As Rajeshwari Balasubramanian, thematic lead at Research, Policy and Analysis, Azad Foundation, puts it, this may lead to “several health concerns like kidney stones and dehydration for women and additional medical costs which they have to bear, especially for women from informal sectors and those who are in on the road, professions like driving.”
The survey provides actionable recommendations to alleviate the situation. These include restoring proportionality between toilet availability and footfall of the region; installing adequate toilets for women and trans/queer people in proportion to their population; improving the hygiene standards of toilets with basic facilities like handwash and continuous water supply, among others.
Among advice from the impacted people, the foremost includes building queer-friendly and earmarked toilets, the mandatory stationing of a female guard and ensuring the availability of light and working latches in women’s toilets.
Reference Link:- https://thewire.in/gender/more-than-half-of-women-in-kolkata-feel-public-toilets-are-unsafe-survey