American Research Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The idea of a sustainable city is commonly associated with the integration of economic development, social well-being, and environmental protection. Yet the everyday realities of urban life reveal that sustainability is also shaped by cultural values, household practices, gender relations, and the ways residents interact with shared spaces and municipal services. Urban sanitation provides a particularly useful lens for examining these connections. Public waste management and sanitation policies involve relationships between local authorities, technical service providers, and residents, while domestic practices of cleanliness, wastewater disposal, and waste handling may generate tensions and environmental pressures within neighbourhoods. Although Sustainable Development Goal 11 promotes inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable urban communities, achieving these objectives remains difficult when deeply rooted social practices conflict with long-term environmental responsibility. This study therefore examines the gendered dimensions of urban sanitation and asks how women's everyday practices, access to technologies, and use of household sanitation equipment are influenced by broader relations of power and gender inequality. Drawing on urban sociology and anthropological perspectives that understand cities as lived social environments, the study adopts a hypothetico-deductive approach. Documentary analysis of academic and grey literature is combined with semi-structured interviews and direct observation. The findings suggest that internalized socio-cultural norms can complicate sustainable urban transformation when environmental practices are disconnected from everyday social realities. Greater attention to gender, culture, and lived experience is therefore essential for developing more socially grounded approaches to urban sustainability.

Keywords: Urban Sustainability; Gender Relations; Sanitation Practices; Social–Spatial Relations; Women and Urban Life; Sustainable Cities; Cultural Practices.