Progress on household drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene 2000-2022:  Special focus on gender

Overview

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development called for ‘ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’ under SDG6, and established ambitious new indicators for WASH services under targets 6.1 and 6.2. The SDG global target for sanitation and hygiene (6.2) includes an explicit reference to ‘paying special attention to the needs of women and girls’, but there remains a lack of commonly agreed indicators for national and global monitoring of gender in WASH.

The 2023 WHO/UNICEF JMP report on household drinking water, sanitation and hygiene has a special focus on gender, and provides the first in-depth analysis of gender inequalities in WASH services. The report presents new sex-disaggregated data on the burden of water collection, as well as perceptions of safety outside the household after dark among men and women without private sanitation facilities. Emerging indicators on menstrual health are highlighted, including national data from 53 countries. And while not sex-disaggregated, a number of WASH indicators should be considered as gender-sensitive, including accessibility of drinking water sources, use of private sanitation facilities, and access to handwashing facilities with soap and water in the home. 

LAUNCH VERSION