300 Million Women and Girls in India Don’t Have Access to Toilets

Relieving Themselves Outside Leaves Them Vulnerable to Disease and Rape. But a New Movement Has Started to Demand Better Sanitation

I remember the women so clearly. They were sitting cross-legged, and they were making bricks. Because I was there in their small hamlet somewhere in India’s western Orissa state to research a book on toilets and sanitation, I asked them if they had toilets. No, they said. By then, I knew that 2.6 billion people worldwide don’t have a toilet, and that 1 billion do something called “open defecation,” which means toileting wherever they can, in fields, roadsides, or by train tracks.

But the women told me something I hadn’t heard …