Lived realities of women sanitation workers in india insights from a participatory research conducted in three cities of India

Abstract

This paper is about the everyday lives of women sanitation workers in Ajmer, Jhansi and Muzaffarpur, drawn from a 2018 participatory study of 206 women conducted under PRIA's Engaged Citizens Responsive City initiative. The paper traces how poverty, caste and gender intersect in the accounts gathered, alongside a fourth thread - the role education, or its absence, plays in keeping these women locked into sanitation work across generations. Interviews, focus group discussions, shadowing exercises and daily logs shaped the research, and the paper stays close to the women's own words rather than smoothing them into policy language. It documents that contractual and outsourced workers earn far less than permanent staff for the same labour, often without safety gear, payslips or basic awareness of laws meant to protect them. It records how discrimination based on touch continues in subtler, everyday forms. The paper closes with recommendations for government bodies and civil society, covering wage parity, grievance redress and community-level steps toward recognition and dignity.