ERG Professor Ray on Toilets and Gender Equality

Public Spaces, Private Acts: Toilets and Gender Equality
“Isha Ray’s contribution, the first of several essays in our ‘Just Environments’ series, examines gender equality through the lens of access to basic sanitation. Moving beyond what the United Nations and others have proposed, Ray argues that in-home toilets are inadequate because they fail to account for those without homes, or those who are not home all day. Rather, if we are to make sanitation truly accessible, we must explicitly design and construct infrastructure that meets the needs of the most marginalized—including the low-income woman whose dignity and mobility rests on the presence of clean, safe facilities outside of the home.”

Published online in Items: Insights from the Social Sciences. Read the full article here.