{"id":38053,"date":"2010-07-24T13:11:30","date_gmt":"2010-07-24T13:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.tehelka.com\/?p=38053"},"modified":"2010-07-24T13:11:30","modified_gmt":"2010-07-24T13:11:30","slug":"why-women-should-not-hold-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/why-women-should-not-hold-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Why women should not hold on"},"content":{"rendered":"

Women suffer much more than men from the pathetic state of our public toilets. How long before they raise a stink, asks\u00a0Aastha Atray Banan<\/strong><\/em>
\n\"\"<\/a>FOR KHAN<\/strong> Fahreen Sajid, a resident of the Behram Nagar slum in Mumbai\u2019s Bandra East, the decision of who to marry is going to be the most practical one of her life. All she wants is a toilet \u2014 a step up from the slum\u2019s community loo. \u201cI need a house that has an attached bathroom,\u201d she told her father, a zari maker, matter-of-factly.
\nIn Haryana, this realisation dawned early. In 2005, the government started the initiative \u2018No Toilet, No Bride\u2019. Slogans of \u201cIf you don\u2019t have a proper lavatory in your house, don\u2019t even think about marrying my daughter\u201d were plastered across villages. About 1.4 million lavatories have been built in the state since 2005 and 798 village panchayats have already received nearly Rs 11.29 crore as reward for having a toilet in each household.
\nWhen James Brown said, \u201cIt\u2019s a man\u2019s world\u201d, he was probably thinking of the long queue outside a women\u2019s loo. Out of Delhi\u2019s 3,192 public urinals, only 132 were for women, according to a Delhi High Court inspection in 2007 and a Centre for Civil Society paper. In Mumbai, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation officer on special duty Anand Jagtap told TEHELKA that the government makes an equal number of toilets for men and women, with the aim of providing one toilet seat for every 50 people.
\nBut Jagtap\u2019s arithmetic is misleading. Even when the number of toilets are same, male ones have more units since they\u2019re equipped with additional standing- style urinals. This is doubly debilitating when you consider that men and women use toilets differently, and, according to a 1988 Virginia Tech study, women need to spend twice as long in the loo as men.
\nThe Indian man just zips down, faces the next wall and relieves himself. In doing so, he faces no shame or embarrassment \u2014 whereas women feel furtive even about using a public loo. Smrithi Rao, a 24-year-old Bengaluru stylist explains, \u201cWe are conditioned by birth to feel shame. And I don\u2019t want men to look at me when I am using a loo.\u201d
\nKaveri Nag, a retail manager in Delhi, says, \u201cI\u2019m scared I\u2019m going to catch an infection, because most toilets are dirty.I carry toilet paper and cover the seats with lots of it.\u201d She drives from Delhi to Jaipur every week, and is shocked that there is not even one toilet on the threehour long stretch: \u201cMen can just get off and go. What do we do?\u201d
\n\"\"<\/a>In the Kutch, women are forced to defecate in a hole in their rooms after childbirth as walking to a distant field demarcated for defecation is out of the question, reveals Ila Pathak, a prominent social activist who works for the Ahmedabad Women\u2019s Action Group. Says Pathak, \u201cMost women in rural areas don\u2019t use sanitary napkins, so during the time they are menstruating they stay at home and follow the same routine. Travelling to places almost an hour away demarcated as a women\u2019s loo can also cause unusual problems. If the woman of the house takes a long time coming back from these areas, family members suspect her of having an affair and beat them up!\u201d
\nAnd in the Northeast, says Charishma, a PhD student in Shillong: \u201cYou can spot men all over the hills and in the main town parking themselves on the side of the roads. But when we go down to the main marketplace every Sunday, we keep in mind that we shouldn\u2019t consume too much liquids, or else we might have to use the dirty loos. We have got used to holding it forever.\u201d
\nFILMMAKER PAROMITA<\/strong>\u00a0Vohra\u2019s documentary Q2P asks the all-important question: Who are India\u2019s super cities being built for if there are not even basic facilities for women? Paromita says with a dry smile, \u201cA woman\u2019s body is never seen biologically, only sexually, and so when a woman sees a man watching her as she goes to the loo, she knows he\u2019ll be thinking of her naked body. The fact that women can\u2019t pee where they want and when they want is a proof of their oppression \u2014 even in the so-called metros.\u201d
\nIndia\u2019s urban women \u2014 both rich and poor, by the way \u2014 face many problems around their toilet routines, but the dilemma of preserving their dignity is often in the forefront. Take the case of Rukhsana Anwar Sheikh, 35, who lives in a Mumbai slum, and has to cross over to a neighbouring slum every time she needs to visit a decent loo. \u201cI only go to the loo before dark as I don\u2019t want to leave my house after a decent hour. And if my calculations go wrong, I just hold it. Women are supposed to be resilient,\u201d she cracks a weary yet resigned smile.
\nSome women, though, are ready to challenge society\u2019s farcical attitude. Bharti, Guddi and Sunita \u2014 housemaids in Delhi\u2019s Rohini neighbourhood \u2014 have decided to shed their inhibitions for the sake of their health. The owners of houses where they work don\u2019t allow them to use the bathrooms, so they hit back by squatting on the main road whenever they feel the need to go, even if they are stared at. \u201cWe gave up sharam long time back. If we fall ill, what will happen to our children? It\u2019s not a choice we can afford to make,\u201d says the trio of Rajasthani banjara women.<\/p>\n

\u2018I only go to the loo before dark and if my calculations go wrong, I just hold it. We’re supposed to be resilient,\u2019 says Anwar Sheikh with a resigned smile<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dr Anita Patil-Deshmukh, executive director of Pukar India, agrees that there are health risks to holding back. \u201cThey suffer from constipation and piles. Women who hold it in for long periods also suffer from recurrent UTI (urinary tract infection) and hence give birth to premature or small babies. It\u2019s one of the silent killers for women all over India.\u201d A study conducted by think tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF) in 2010, on sanitation facilities at Mumbai\u2019s 106 suburban railway stations, revealed that the ratio of women to men getting UTI was 6:1.
\nJournalist Brinda Majithia, 25, commutes 90 minutes from far-off Mumbai suburb Kandivali to Lower Parel every day and never uses the railway station toilets. \u201cI have gone eight hours at a stretch without using a bathroom. The only way you can think of using a station loo is if you don\u2019t touch anything.\u201d At her office, too, there is water shortage. \u201cLast month, we were actually forced to go to a nearby mall because our office made no provision for water shortage in the city,\u201d she says. \u201cMen didn\u2019t suffer \u2014 they were still able to use the office urinals.\u201d
\nIt is well known that the right to education is hampered by lack of loos in schools. Half of India\u2019s government-run schools don\u2019t have separate toilets for males and females, forcing young women to use unisex facilities or nothing at all. Bina Lashkari of the NGO Doorstep Schools, which works with Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation schools all over Mumbai, says, \u201cMost girls give up coming to school once they hit puberty, as they are wary of using the dirty unisex toilet, especially when they are menstruating.\u201d In Bengaluru, in a school which had no loo, girls would go in twos to the corner of the compound. One girl would shelter the girl peeing by standing in front of her with her skirt spread out! No wonder, a Ministry of Health and Family Welfare health survey from 2006 found that 22 percent of girls complete 10 or more years of schooling compared to 35 percent of boys.
\nBritish urban design planner Clara Greed once said that you can judge a nation by its toilets and assess the true position of women in society by looking at its toilet queues. In India, all we can do is hope, and wait with our legs crossed as tight as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Housemaids Bharti, Guddi and Sunita decided to shed their inhibitions for the sake of their health. The owners of houses where they work don\u2019t allow them to use the bathrooms, so they hit back by squatting on the road whenever they feel the need to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":38067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[5725,5791,6133,6134,6135,6136,6137,6138],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38053"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}