Inclusive WASH Facilities: Streamlining the implementation of gender policy and the use of gender guidelines

The aim of this PhD is to understand what factors determine how we implement and enforce gender policy and gender guidelines to ensure inclusive sanitation design. The project will look at how historic sexism has shaped sanitation design, and will seek to review gender guidelines that have been created to tackle this issue, as well as the design of a conceptual model to ground policy and guidelines in that ensures more successful uptake and usage.
Currently we know there are countless sanitation facilities that have been designed without gender in mind. Examples include toilets without menstrual hygiene disposal options, or facilities without lights and locks. We also know there exists many guideline documents that seek to solve these issues, yet the issues persist. By understanding what these guidelines say and how they are used we can begin to understand the cause of poor uptake: is it purely a lack of funding, or deeper rooted in society?
I will also carry out a Global review of Gender Policy to see where people are beginning to take notice and action on behalf of mainstreaming gender into decision making. This will then show where should have more inclusively designed facilities. Using prior studies that document sanitation facilities I will be able to assess if the policies have indeed led to better design, or if a lack of enforcement has rendered the new policies unused.
Using the knowledge from these two tasks, and further research on external factors that affect policy uptake and guidelines usage I will be able to create a model that recognises and explains what external societal factors effect policy and guideline usage. In time this will then lead to better policy implementation, and smoother guideline usage, resulting in increased design rates of inclusive sanitation facilities.
The project therefore fits directly into two of the EPSRC themes. The project at heart is about the design of inclusive sanitation facilities, so is about 'infrastructure and urban systems' in Engineering, and ensuring high quality inclusive design is achieved. It also fits into the theme of 'manufacturing the future'. The challenge that I am aiming to tackle in response to how to improve the future is gender equality. Sanitation that is not inclusive and does not consider gender is both a health and hygiene risk as well as a safety and security risk. My project will have a global focus, gender inequality is not something that purely effects those in lower income economies, it is systemic in patriarchal societies. Therefore, my project is applicable across all economies, including the UK, and looks at the profoundly serious problem of gender inequality. This PhD is about engineering and facility design at its core, but rather than asking the technical "how do we design these facilities" I am asking "how to we ensure design is inclusive".

Water-WISER will train a cohort of 50 British research engineers and scientists and equip them to work in challenging environments both in the low-income settings of rapidly growing poor cities and in the changing urban environment of the UK, Europe and other regions with a historic endowment of aging infrastructure. The vision is for a generation of engineers with the skills to deliver the trans-disciplinary innovations needed to ensure that future water, waste and sanitation infrastructure is resilient to the stresses posed by rapid urbanisation, global climate change and increasingly extreme natural and man-made disasters. Our alumni will address the urgent need to re-imagine urban spaces as net contributors to ecological and environmental well-being rather than being net users of vital resources such as energy, nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon. These new leaders will be an essential resource if the UK is to deliver on its commitment to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 6 which calls for universal access to safely managed water and sanitation services, within planetary and local ecological boundaries. This next generation of research engineers will enable UK-based engineering consultancies, manufacturers, and utility companies to grow their share of the expanding global market for water and waste services, for example; in the water services industry from 3% to 10% (an increase of £33 billion per annum) by 2030, and attract significant inward investment.
The research which Water-WISER cohorts enable will form the basis of new innovations in the design and delivery of resilient infrastructure and services. Innovations developed by Water-WISER graduates will inform how growing cities are designed and built in the global south and will be used to inform the re-engineering and replacement of the aging infrastructure on which the UK's water and waste services are currently reliant. Our alumni will form the new generation of leaders who will play a central role in securing a larger share of the international water and waste management consultancy market to UK consultancies. The network of expertise and skills created by Water-WISER will enhance potential for collaborations between major UK players (for example strengthening links between UK consultancy, the Department for International Development, and leading UK water agencies such as WaterAid and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor) and between UK companies and partners in the global south including international investors such as the World Bank, European Investment Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation. Graduates of Water-WISER will enter industry, academia and development agencies having spent a substantial period (minimum of six months) embedded in an industry or development partner organisation delivering their field-based research. Water-WISER students will thus gain a unique combination of trans-disciplinary training, field experience and cohort networking; they are destined for leadership roles in UK and international engineering and development consultancies, academia, international development banks, international agencies such as the United Nations and international non-governmental organisations.