Global Perspectives on Gender and Space

Engaging Feminism and Development

Ann Oberhauser, Ibipo Johnston-Anumonwo, Ann Oberhauser, Ibipo Johnston-Anumonwo

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780367669591
• eBook ISBN: 9781135125257
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Feminism has re-shaped the way we think about equality, power relations and social change. Recent feminist scholarship has provided new theoretical frameworks, methodologies and empirical analyses of how gender and feminism are situated within the development process. Global Perspectives on Gender and Space: Engaging Feminism and Development draws upon this framework to explore the effects of globalization on development in diverse geographical contexts. It explores how women's and men's lives are gendered in specific spaces as well as across multiple landscapes.

Traveling from South Asia to sub-Saharan Africa to North America and the Caribbean, the contributions illustrate the link between gender and global development, including economic livelihoods, policy measures and environmental change. Divided into three sections, Global Perspectives on Gender and Space showcases the following issues: One) the impact of neoliberal policies on transnational migration, public services and microfinance programs; Two) feminist and participatory methodologies employed in the evaluation of land use, women's cooperatives and liberation struggles and Three) gendered approaches to climate change, natural disasters and conservation the global South. A feminist lens is the common thread throughout these sections that weaves gender into the very fabric of everyday life, providing a common link between varied spaces around the globe by mapping gendered patterns of power and social change.

This timely volume provides geographic comparisons and case studies to give empirically informed insights on processes and practices relevant to feminism and development. It illustrates ways to empower individuals and communities through transnational struggles and grassroots organizations, while emphasizing human rights and gender equity, and will be of interest to those studying Geography, Development Studies, International Relations and Gender Studies.

Part I Feminist perspectives on neoliberal globalization

1 Gender equity and commercialization of public toilet services in Nairobi, Kenya

Jeremia N. Njeru, Ibipo Johnston-Anumonwo and Samuel O. Owuor

DOI: 10.4324/9780203076392-2

Introduction

With the promotion of private-sector development since the 1980s, neoliberalism has become a dominant ideology underpinning the global political economy, providing “the context and direction for how humans affect and interact with non-human nature and with one another” (Heynen and Robbins 2005: 5). Akey feature of neoliberahsm in the development process is its increased focus on market-oriented reforms in the global South through the delivery of basic municipal services such as provision of water and sanitation by private-sector actors (Bakker 2013). This shift in management of basic municipal services from the public to the private sector (or running them as if they were not public goods) is linked to changing household gender relations. In fact, feminist critiques of neoliberalism note that when services that were previously provided by the state become privatized or commercialized, workload for procurement of services by women intensifies alongside other social reproduction and household care-giving duties (Braedley and Luxton 2010). For example, since women are primarily responsible for water procurement to meet family members’ health and hygiene needs, privatization of water services complicates their ability to fulfill those needs (Kerr 2004: 16).

In this chapter, we present a combined feminist and urban political ecology inquiry about the impacts of neoliberalism on the provision of water and sanitation services. The analysis draws from literature on urban gender equity, sanitation and neoliberal reforms as a framework for our research study of municipal toilet services in Nairobi, Kenya. Precisely because “neoliberal policies, and practices are not uniform and the effects are dependent on context” (Braedley and Luxton 2010: 20), the need for more studies conducted in the global South arises as a balance to the current preponderance of scholarship on the impacts of neoliberalism in the neoliberal heartlands of North America and Europe (for exceptions, see Beneria (2003), Ferguson (2006), Myers (2005) and Yeboah (2006)). This chapter contributes to the literature on neoliberalism and the provision of social services by highlighting the consequences of neoliberal policies on the commercialization of public services, especially water and sanitation in the global South.

The growing literature on toilet studies offers appropriate analytical room to examine the complex connections between women’s lives and access to water and sanitation services in poor countries. As McDonald and Ruiters (2005) suggest, neoliberalization of these services transformed the managerial ethos of water and sanitation service organizations, political relationships and the relation between the state and citizens. An unsurprising result therefore, is that access to water and sanitation services has become important in debates about the advantages and drawbacks of neoliberal globalization. The centrality of water and sanitation provision to the realization of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 has invigorated these debates (McGranahan and Satterthwaite 2006). In this study, empirical evidence from Nairobi on private-sector participation in the provision of municipal toilet services reveals mixed results about the link between privatization of sanitation services and improvement in women’s wellbeing. Thus, the study supports the position that effects of privatization or commercialization are not uniform and should not be regarded as such.

Gender, sanitation services and public toilets

An estimated 2.5 billion people, the majority of them in the less developed world, do not have access to sufficient sanitation facilities (UNICEF/WHO 2012). Halving the proportion of people in the world without sustainable access to basic sanitation by 2015 is part of the seventh goal of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank initiatives that investigate the social and economic impacts of inadequate access to hygienic sanitation facilities highlight the health and mortality costs associated with diseases of poor water quality, sanitation and hygiene; the economic cost of time spent procuring water; and reductions in educational achievement due to illness and girls’ attendance rates at schools (WSP 2012). In the case of Kenya, a 2007 study involving a survey of 2,905 households in three major cities (Nairobi, Kisumu and Mombasa) found that 70 percent of households reported that women were the primary water collectors. The study further reported that in Nairobi, the poor pay almost six times as much for water than the non-poor (CRC 2007).

As sanitation gains more global attention, public or communal toilets have gained interest among scholars and development practitioners alike. This interest stems from the assumption that safe and clean toilets are vital to establishing healthy, equitable and dignified communities. In the global North, where sanitation infrastructures are highly developed, scholars examined public toilets in the contexts of sex segregation, sexual identity, and accessibility and design and indicated their ramifications for social justice, citizenship and inclusiveness (see for example, Gershenson and Penner 2009; Greed 2003). Feminists seeking to understand how the availability, design and lack of toilets impact the wellbeing of women and girls focus on the role of the urban built environment in examining women’s lives and their position in society (Gershenson and Penner 2009; Greed 2003; Jewitt 2011). Therefore, as key components of the urban built environment, public toilets

are important and revealing sites for discussions of the construction and maintenance of gender, sexual identity and power relations in general. Public toilets shape everyday urban experience on both an individual and collective level through their provision, location, and design. For instance, public toilets not only inform a woman’s ability to move comfortably through a city, but also define what her “needs” are perceived to be by those in power and how she is expected to conduct herself publicly.

(Gershenson and Penner 2009: 9–10)

Studies further show that women often prioritize urban amenities such as public toilets differently than men, placing importance on location or design (Pain 1991; Valentine 1992). Availability and quality of public toilets, therefore, appear to be more meaningful to women. Indeed, reforms in the global North range from calls for more safe toilets for females to more gender-sensitive designs. And, in the global South, underdeveloped and inadequate sanitation facilities and infrastructure are also associated with important gender differences (Brewster et al. 2006). As Kothari notes, while lack of sanitation facilities affects men and women, sanitation needs and demands differ with gender:

Women have particular needs and concerns of privacy, dignity and personal safety. The lack of sanitation facilities in the homes can force women and girls to use secluded places, which are often away from home, exposing them to the risk of sexual abuse; in other circumstances, girls are forced to defecate only at home and help their mothers to dispose of human and solid waste.

(Kothari 2003: 20)

Additionally, evidence points to a link between girls’ access to public toilets and education in the developing world. Research indicates that the availability of toilets in schools can, by providing privacy and dignity, enable girls to get an education, particularly after they reach puberty (Brewster et al. 2006). Mitchell (2009) underscores the importance of location and quality of toilets to school-girls in her work on the geographies of danger and, specifically, young students’ accounts of safe and unsafe spaces in their schools. Documentation provided by students serves as important evidence of fear and anxiety regarding public toilets expressed by schoolgirls in action-oriented fieldwork undertaken in Swaziland, South Africa and Rwanda. Students’ photographs, drawings and narratives depict unsanitary or insecure toilets in isolated locations or in locations where darkness, bushes, roads or other neighboring land uses (e.g. barracks) are bothersome elements (Mitchell 2009). Similar safety concerns in boarding schools are aired by an adult early-career female teacher, who remarked that: “we have been trying to get the administration to build another block of toilets closer to the dormitory. It is not safe” (Mitchell 2009: 70). By and large, public toilets in Africa are grossly inadequate for females.

Consequently, scholars, policy makers and activists have called for improved sanitation facilities because the improvements could be more meaningful and impactful to women in urban and non-urban locations (Dodman 2009; Undie et al. 2006). Zachary Asher Mason, a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, observed in his 2008 blog:

A toilet for girls does not mean that everyone who uses it will necessarily be able to read and write and it certainly does not guarantee future employment—but it provides the infrastructure necessary so that girls can at least stay in school through adolescence….

In sum, while accounts in the literature about public toilets emphasize the gendered nature of access to sanitation services, scholars are only beginning to substantially engage with the neoliberal discourse of providing sanitation services. Feminist and urban political ecological perspectives on neoliberalism are especially relevant for interrogating types of sanitation reforms (existing or potential) that are important and meaningful to men and women.

Neoliberalism and sanitation services in sub-Saharan Africa: a feminist and urban political ecology analysis

(N)eoliberalism has had substantial implications for African cities. Neoliberalism is clearly a large part of what led the exasperated former mayor of Zanzibar to ask me the rhetorical questions with which I began the chapter: it seems that water, drainage, and garbage do, indeed have an ideology attached to them now.

(Myers 2005: 6)

Feminist scholars are increasingly aware of the gendered outcomes of the practices and policies of the global spread of neoliberalism, including in sub-Saharan Africa. Although there is no single feminist approach to neoliberal restructuring, but instead multiple approaches with a varying mix of feminist perspectives and methodologies, many argue that neoliberal processes have negative effects on women (Beneria 2003; Johnston-Anumonwo and Doane 2011; Runyan and Marchand 2000: 225). In their discussion about ways in which the transfer of governmental responsibilities to the private sector affects people’s daily lives, Braedley and Luxton (2010: 12) identify social reproduction as one of the gender regimes that anchor neoliberalism. Women undertake the bulk of the socialization and reproductive household labor that includes mundane, uncounted and unpaid work associated with activities such as cleaning, obtaining water and food, cooking and taking care of family members. Yet neoliberalism’s commitment to reducing government expenditures for social reproduction activities undermines state initiatives that improve women’s conditions (Braedley and Luxton 2010: 15).

A significant portion of feminist analyses about globalization stress the effects of privatization, analyzing the negative and positive consequences of neoliberalism on the basis of gender. Since government cut-backs impact social spending, privatization affects women, especially low-income women, by causing them to bear additional reproductive burdens, including the care of household members, the sick and the elderly. Global perspectives on gender-water geographies shed some light on the implications of neoliberal water policies (O’Reilly et al. 2009; Sultana and Loftus 2011). Many less developed countries receive loans and other forms of debt relief from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the condition that “inefficient,” state-run enterp...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: engaging feminism and development – worlds of inequality and change
• PART I Feminist perspectives on neoliberal globalization
• PART II Gendering the field: participatory feminist research
• PART III Gender, the environment and community-based development
• Index