Women in Slum, Risking Their Safety to Access and Usage of Basic Sanitation Facilities-A Literature Review

The paper focuses on the safety of women in slums in accessing sanitation facilities. Various factors affect the safety of women while accessing or using sanitation facilities in slums. These factors are related to the infrastructure of toilet blocks, the location of the toilet, the route to the toilet, timings of toilet use, and the number of toilets. Most of the women face sexual abuse or rape while visiting or using toilets or due to open defecation. The papers that were examined contained a variety of slums around the world, including industrial to coastal slums. The entire sample size (the number of individuals living in slum households and the number of slum homes) researched through the literature were 6663) and the period of the study is from past 12 years ie from 2010-2022. The study found that most cases of violence or crime against women are due to a lack of lighting in and on the route to access sanitation and water facilities, lack of access to the toilet block, as well as the dangerous location of Public Toilets (PTs) and Common toilet complexes (CTCs).This paper is an attempt to solve problems related to women's safety while accessing or using basic water and sanitation facilities.