Indonesia’s sanitation level is considered bad in term of the quality of services and public access opportunity. In contrast, the demand towards clean water keeps increasing, particularly in the urban areas due to the high demand of areas excavated for development each year. The limited access to clean water can trigger the emergence of new problems related to health and environment, more particularly towards women whom they are closely related to clean water either for household or personal needs. The absence of clean water will increase the risk of sexual abuses in public facilities and unfulfilled women’s specific needs. This article analyses the commitment of local region in providing gender-responsive urban sanitation considering to need separation towards men and women. The research was conducted in Semanggi sub-district of Surakarta City bearing the program “Kampung Sanitasi”, the collaboration between Surakarta Government and USAID since 2014. The primary data were obtained through interviews and observations, whilst the
secondary data were gained from documents. The data were analyzed using 7S McKinsey model (system & staff) for local-region commitment and Sara Longwe model to see whether the available sanitation has been gender-responsive through access, participation, control and benefit received by women. The analysis result using McKinsey’s theory shows that there hasn’t been commitment of the local region providing responsive-gender sanitation. When using Sara Longwe’s theory it is found that 1) women’s access towards proper sanitation increased since the program was launched, 2) women’s participation in program planning is still low but its implementation is quite sufficient, 3) in control women don’t tend to have authority in using collective facilities; it’s proven by many of them are feared of sexual abuses at sanitation area, 4) in benefit women merely still got access to clean water but not for being protected from sex abuses and moreover the walking distance was still too far. Thus the commitment of the local region to provide responsive-gender urban sanitation has not been actualized maximally. The existing sanitation facility is still neutral gender, without separating the practical needs and strategic gender.
Keywords: gender-responsive, urban sanitation, Longwe, local-region commitment