The Role of Water, Sanitation, Hygiene, and Gender Norms on Women's Health: A Conceptual Framework
Rita Jalali
Abstract
While the health impact of poor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) conditions on children have been well documented, there has been less focus paid to its adverse impact on women's well-being and health. In this article, I highlight the health burden of water and sanitation insecurities for women by proposing a conceptual framework for understanding WASH-related diseases from a gender perspective, focused primarily on resource poor countries. The framework draws on feminist perspectives to examine how WASH insecure communities constrain women's functionings and capabilities. I identify eight different social–cultural pathways that fall into two synthetic constructs—gendered relations in the household and gendered presentation of the body—because they illustrate how social and cultural norms may burden women and put them at risk of exposure to a variety of WASH-related diseases. I use the critical interpretive synthesis methodology and draw on research from the fields of epidemiology, medicine, and social sciences to develop this conceptual framework that connects WASH-related diseases to gender norms that oppress women. The gender perspective proposed here has important implications for women living under poor water and sanitation conditions and for the WASH sector more broadly. It suggests providing women with direct financial assistance to purchase sanitary material, collecting sex-disaggregated data on sanitation access and on the health impact of gendered WASH-related tasks to improve women's health and quality of life.