Across the world, millions of women and girls still face daily challenges accessing safe sanitation and managing their menstrual health with dignity. These challenges extend beyond physical health, affecting education, employment, and participation in community leadership. The Sanitation and Hygiene Fund (SHF) works to change this by building systems and markets that remove barriers and enable women, girls, and marginalized groups to live healthier, safer, and more dignified lives.
Achieving safely managed sanitation and menstrual health goes beyond constructing toilets or distributing products. It requires transforming the systems that determine access, decision-making, and who benefits. In low- and middle-income countries, 3.4 billion people still lack safely managed sanitation, while over 613 million women and girls rely on improvised materials to manage their periods. SHF’s Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) vision aims to reshape sanitation and menstrual health markets to be inclusive, equitable, and driven by local innovation. Market-based approaches can create lasting change by fostering entrepreneurship, innovation, and local job creation, but only when women are actively included in market design.
SHF’s core initiatives—Next Generation Sanitation (NGS) and Capital M for menstrual health—embed GESI as a driver of innovation and impact. NGS supports the development of sanitation markets that generate value, jobs, and equity by strengthening local enterprises and non-sewered systems, expanding access to underserved areas, and creating economic opportunities, particularly for women. Capital M treats menstrual health as a systemic market challenge rather than just a product gap. Although the menstrual health market is valued at USD 28 billion annually, hundreds of millions remain excluded. Inclusive policies, standards, and investments that prioritize women-led enterprises can promote both dignity and economic growth.
Inclusive markets strengthen resilience. When women shape the design, financing, and delivery of sanitation and menstrual health services, systems become more innovative, responsive, and accountable. Transformation also requires addressing policies and societal norms that affect participation. SHF works with partners to support gender-responsive policies, promote equity targets in public–private partnerships, and strengthen the leadership of women’s organizations in the sector. Structural barriers—from access to finance and data to workplace safety and representation—must also be addressed to ensure meaningful participation.
Building inclusive sanitation and menstrual health markets requires collective responsibility. Governments need to integrate gender and inclusion into national strategies, budgets, and monitoring frameworks. Investors and development partners should ensure financing criteria reflect GESI outcomes. Enterprises can lead by embedding fair employment, equitable pay, and safety measures for women across value chains. Civil society and social movements play a critical role in maintaining accountability and centering lived experiences. Inclusion must be a design principle, not an afterthought, for every decision and every investment.
SHF emphasizes that inclusive markets do more than deliver better products—they provide opportunity, dignity, and empowerment. When women lead, markets become stronger. When marginalized voices are heard, solutions are sustainable. SHF’s strategy aims to build a future where everyone can access safe sanitation and menstrual health with dignity and where equality is a lived reality for all.
Dietske Simons, Head of Impact at SHF, leverages her expertise in sustainable finance and impact management to drive strategy for climate-resilient, gender-inclusive growth. Leisa Christine Gibson, a gender and inclusion specialist, supports SHF in embedding Gender Equality and Social Inclusion into strategies, policies, and operations, contributing to the development of the organization’s GESI framework.
