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Pavement dwellers' sanitation activities — visible but ignored
01.01.2007
Pavement dwellers are often invisible to government, development partners and researchers, even though they comprise 2 per cent of the urban population and their entire lives are on full display to passers-by every day. Shelter and security, convenience and privacy are considered essential for all, yet even these are lacking for the poorest of the urban poor. -
Manual scavenging - a life of dignity?
01.10.2007
In many of India's cities, domestic dry latrines are emptied daily, a task that has been forced traditionally on a group considered so lowly that they were placed outside the Hindu caste order. In spite of the fact that their ‘out caste’ position and work combine to reinforce their social ostracism, a latent fear persists, especially amongst their elders, that their livelihoods are being phased out along with dry latrines. -
Menstrual hygiene management: education and empowerment for girls?
01.01.2015
This paper discusses the recent attention of the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector to resolving the menstrual hygiene crisis for young girls in developing countries. Menstrual hygiene management (MHM) interventions, including the use of sanitary pads, education, and awareness, and where possible separate, sanitary toilets, are identified to have far-reaching impacts on the education and empowerment of girls. Field research conducted in Ghana's Northern Region indicates a pronounced socialized, sexualized understanding and experience of menstruation among young girls and their families, school teachers, and local NGOs. Unfortunately WASH initiatives only allow interventions to manage menstrual hygiene, leaving the young girls and others in their social settings to deal with the larger subset of sexuality issues. We argue that opening the dominant discourse of a medicalized concept of menstruation to other meanings and experiences will have significant implications for the education and empowerment of young adolescent girls.