1 in 3 Women Living With Fear for Want of a Toilet

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post.
Across the world, 1 in 3 women risk shame, disease and even attack because they have nowhere safe to go to the toilet. That's 1.25 billion women.

provide the world's poorest people with safe toilets and clean water.
Diarrhea
Poor sanitation and dirty water can have a detrimental effect on health. Every year, around 2,000 mothers go through the pain of losing a child to diarrhea brought about through a lack of access to safe toilets and clean water. In fact, diarrhea kills more children every year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

Having nowhere safe to go to the toilet also means an increased risk of shame, harassment and even violence for women and girls when they are forced to go out in search of a private place to go to the toilet.

A survey commissioned by WaterAid of women living across some of the slums of Lagos, Nigeria, highlighted this shocking problem. One in five women interviewed had first or second hand experience of verbal harassment and intimidation, or had been threatened or physically assaulted, in the past year alone when going to the toilet.

Finding a place to go to the toilet can take women away from productive activities for long periods of time. In fact, women and girls living in developing countries without toilet facilities spend 97 billion hours each year finding a place to go in the open. This is double the total number of hours worked every year by the entire labour force in the UK.

Women are often hesitant to talk about this issue, but with these experiences of fear, disease, indignity and violence being common wherever women lack access to safe sanitation, the world must take note.

Investing in sanitation and water works. For every £1 invested in water and sanitation, an average of £4 is returned in increased productivity. Since 1990, around 900 million women and girls have gained access to safe sanitation facilities, while over a billion have gained access to clean drinking water. This is great progress, but our efforts cannot stop here.