Women Members of Local Government Led Rural Sanitation in Bangladesh: Policy and Technology

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) aims sanitation for all. The SDG will create access among population having no latrine and maintains it. Although local government is often responsible for sanitation and women play important roles in sanitation, women have rarely led sanitation representing the institutions. A randomized controlled trial was implemented to learn whether Women Members of the institution (WMUPs), with community womens groups (CWGs), could lead sustained sanitation programs in high sanitation achieved rural Bangladesh representing local government Union Parishad (UP). All 64 Unions (32 intervention and 32 comparison) were selected with greater than70 % sanitation. All members of UPs and CWGs received training on sanitation related policy, gender and social aspects in intervention unions. The outcomes were assessed by comparing the structure of UPs and conditions of household latrines during baseline and end line surveys. Randomly selected approximately 1, 143 households in intervention and 1, 134 in comparison areas were observed. WMUP led UP sanitation structure changed from 6 % to 97 % in intervention area while remained same in comparison area (25 %). The basic latrine use was significantly different/higher in intervention than comparison during end-line survey (77.7 % vs 69.3 %, C. I.0.047 to 0.120, P