Sanitation has evolved from a purely technical discipline to one that includes social, environmental, economic and, increasingly, gender considerations. However, blurry notions of gender are frequently offered in the sanitation literature. Although it has been recognized that gender-responsive sanitation does not mean ‘toilets for women’, substantial alternatives are rarely debated. We structure our review of sanitation in developing countries along three lines: we start by fine-tuning the concept of gender both from the academic and the practitioner's perspective, analyse relevant developments in gender-specific policies and programming, and finally review the most appropriate toilet room and menstrual hygiene technologies. We argue that strategies to make technologies gender-responsive need to be based upon a thorough analysis of the social arrangements of the intimate, and how these are negotiated and institutionalized in a specific context. A lack of robust gender-segregated data on sanitation policies and technologies, along with reductionist framings of gender are to blame for limited progress in verifying the need for, and impact of, gender-responsive sanitation. Technology and policy development and implementation would benefit from gender-considerate interpretations of shame, dignity, safety and status. Further progress could be achieved by improving the translation process between different academic framings of the sanitation crisis.

Five years after adoption of the 2030 Agenda, there is a general lack of progress in reaching its Sustainable Development Goals-be it on national, regional, or global scales. Scientists attribute this above all to insufficient understanding and addressing of interactions between goals and targets. This study aims to contribute to the methodological conceptualization of the 2030 Agenda's implementation at the national level. To this end, taking the case of Switzerland, we tested and enhanced existing approaches for assessing interactions among the 2030 Agenda's targets and for analysing the systemic relevance of priority targets. Building on our insights, the article concludes with an eight-step proposal for creating knowledge to support national 2030 Agendas.

This study compares monetary and multidimensional poverty measures for the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Using household data of 2007/2008, we compare the empirical outcomes of the country's current official monetary poverty measure with those of a multidimensional poverty measure. We analyze which population subgroups are identified as poor by both measures and thus belong to the category of the poorest of the poor; and we look at which subgroups are identified as poor by only one of the measures and belong either to the category of the income-poor (identified as poor only by the monetary measure) or to that of the overlooked poor (identified as poor only by the multidimensional poverty measure). Furthermore, we examined drivers of these differences using a multinomial regression model and found that monetary poverty does not capture the multiple deprivations of ethnic minorities, who are only identified as poor when using a multidimensional poverty measure. We conclude that complementing the monetary poverty measure with a multidimensional poverty index would enable more effective targeting of poverty reduction efforts.

This study contributes to the ongoing discussion on how to attribute and evaluate the contribution of transdisciplinary research to sustainable development. As co-created knowledge is a key product of transdisciplinary research, we tested the hypothesis that the extent to which this knowledge is utilized beyond the projects consortia, in different areas-from scientific methods and insights to policy decisions-and across a continuum of geographical scales can be used to identify potential impact pathways. With this aim we developed an analytical framework that links the transdisciplinary process to six possible utilization stages as indicators for usability of co-created knowledge and implemented it using a survey and semi-structured interviews in 22 research projects active in 36 countries. Our results show that even during the implementation of the projects, co-created knowledge is utilized by multiple actors at different stages, in all areas and scales simultaneously, suggesting multiple impact pathways. Utilization of project knowledge was predominantly indicated for national-level policymaking and research partners named co-creation of knowledge with key stakeholders as the most frequently used mechanism for promoting knowledge utilization. Closer analysis showed different understandings of and approaches to knowledge co-creation. These can be linked to weaker or stronger definitions of transdisciplinarity. The analysis shows that when using strong transdisciplinarity approaches researchers need to face challenges in encompassing multiple epistemologies and in facilitating dialogue. Some results suggest that inclusion and collaboration by co-created knowledge can empower actors otherwise excluded. Our research shows that although transdisciplinary projects have non-linear impact pathways, these can be partially assessed using the proposed analytical framework. Further, our results indicate interesting links between usability-through knowledge utilization-inclusion and collaboration regarding knowledge co-creation in transdisciplinary research. We conclude with the observation that transdisciplinarity and its requirements still need to be better understood by actors within and beyond the research community.

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