Beyond toilet decisions: Tracing sanitation journeys among women in informal housing in India

Urban political ecology shows how fractured power dynamics mutually shape urban built environments, formulating everyday negotiations around accessing needed sanitation infrastructure in the Global South. However, given critiques of the effectiveness of state health interventions to promote household toilet uptake and gender equity in sanitation, less attention has been paid to how or why urban poor women might gravitate towards a household toilet at all. I address this by drawing on mixed-methods and ethnographic fieldwork among women from two urban informal settlements in Maharashtra, India. My findings center on sanitation journeys, which I consider to be daily determinations around accessing different forms of sanitation infrastructure. I find that sanitation journeys go beyond what is usually considered a binary decision about whether to build a toilet to uncover an active, gendered timeline of connected events which may be sped up, slowed down, or reversed. Second, sanitation journeys occur within the space of tension between local residents of informal housing and municipal governing actors, thus elucidating ways in which the physical environment of sanitation relates to the social environment of gendered conflict, support, and competition. Lastly, a household toilet carries a dual role within these sanitation journeys; it is embedded within imaginaries of upward mobility and home-making, but is also complicated by the threat of eviction. In characterizing these trends and contradictions, I highlight how constrained choice behind sanitation journeys can illuminate ways women juggle the confluence of urban precarities amidst state efforts to change the sanitation environment.

Automated summary

The study reveals that sanitation journeys extend beyond the typical binary decision of building a toilet, uncovering an active, gendered timeline of events. Additionally, these journeys occur within the tense space between local residents of informal housing and municipal governing actors, shedding light on the relationship between the physical environment of sanitation and the social environment of gendered conflict, support, and competition. Lastly, household toilets play a dual role in these journeys, embedded in aspirations of upward mobility and homemaking, yet complicated by the threat of eviction. The constrained choices behind sanitation journeys highlight how women navigate the convergence of urban precarities amidst state efforts to transform the sanitation landscape.