Right to Sanitation: A Gender Perspective
This knowledge brief examines the right to sanitation through a gender lens, exploring its legal recognition in India and globally, and its connection to human dignity and equality. It highlights how gender norms, social roles, and structural inequities shape sanitation access, participation, and policy, and proposes ways to make the right to sanitation truly inclusive.
What you’ll find in this brief
- Rationale for framing the right to sanitation as a fundamental human right
- Overview of its legal status and recognition internationally and within India
- Exploration of what it means to realise this right in practice, globally and nationally
- Gendered analysis of sanitation access, menstrual hygiene, gender-based violence, and participation in the sanitation workforce
- Reflections on inclusion beyond the gender binary in sanitation policies and practice
- Recommendations for developing gender-responsive benchmarks to assess sanitation policies, schemes, and implementation
