When you think about it, it makes sense that the line for women’s restrooms are longer. Women simply have more to do in the bathroom than men! We have to clean the toilet seat, put a cover on it, pull down pants/skirt/underwear, sit, pee, wipe, and get our clothes back to how they were before. Not to mention deal with our periods! Yet despite all of this, women's bathrooms often have the same number or less toilets as the men's restrooms.
In 2015 this issue inadvertently came into the national stage when after a five minute commercial and bathroom break from a Democratic Primary Debate, Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton didn’t make it back to the stage before the debate started again. The image of Hillary’s empty podium with the two male candidates at the ready at their podiums caused a lot of stir in the media.
In a New York Times article entitled “Finally, an Explanation for Hillary Clinton’s Long Bathroom Break” the world learned that Secretary Clinton had 1 minute and 45 seconds to walk to the bathroom, and 1 minute and 45 seconds to walk back to the stage. That left her only 1 minute 30 seconds to use the bathroom and wash her hands. Any woman, particularly one dressed professionally who is going to be speaking in front of an audience, can tell you that this is an impossible time frame.
Ghent University in Belgium studied the bathroom wait time differentials between men and women’s bathrooms and found that women waited on average 6 minutes and 19 seconds, while men waited just 11 seconds on average. The study found that this differential has two major components.
First, men’s restrooms can accommodate more occupants. This is because urinals take up less physical space than stalls, men’s restrooms can on average accommodate 20 to 30 percent more users than women’s restrooms. While having equal square footage in women’s and men’s restrooms appears equal, the effect is a structural inequality that disadvantages women by forcing them to wait significantly longer than men for the same accommodations.
Second, women spend more time in the restroom for the practical reasons outlined above. Women, on average, take 1.5 to two times as long as men to use the restroom. The study found that if you doubled the number of toilets for women, the wait times between the genders would be equal. However, this requires a huge amount of physical space.
The easiest and most effective solution to the time differential is to make restrooms unisex, also referred to as gender neutral. With gender-neutral restrooms, the wait times for both men and women is equalized to two minutes or less.
Gender-neutral restrooms are a growing trend, particularly at Universities and in California where all single-use restrooms are now required to be gender neutral. The next move – restroom parity in the form of gender-neutral restrooms.
6 comments:
Kim, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post about how gender-neutral bathrooms can solve many of the problems generated through sex-segregated bathrooms. As a woman, I’m painfully aware of how much longer the wait time for the women’s restroom is compared to the men’s, but I have to say I was still shocked when I read how, on average, women have to wait 6 minutes and 19 seconds for the bathroom, while men only have to wait around 11 seconds! Seeing it broken down into averages really brings the reality of how absurd the wait for women’s bathrooms is.
I agree that unisex bathrooms are the way to solve this problem (and the other issues gendered bathrooms cause), and I hope that more venues consider transitioning their gendered bathroom spaces into private, unisex stalls.
Kim,
Thank you for this insightful post on the importance of gender-neutral bathrooms. Bathrooms are just one of many commonly used facilities in society that should be gender-neutral. Given the fact that women spend more time in the restroom and structural inequalities exist that pose as a barrier to their ability to gain timely access, this seems like an obvious and crucial step for society to take.
It is encouraging to hear that there is a growing trend among universities and states in general to adopt gender neutral single use restrooms. Fruitful steps towards parity in the most fundamental institutions is what is needed in our society to make larger and more deep-seated change, such as mandating that all restrooms become gender neutral.
As with most platforms for change, there will likely be scrutiny and naysayers. I wonder what tactics can be employed to combat those that try to stand in the way of this progress. For example, many politicians such as Mike Pence who oppose the construction of gender-neutral restrooms rely on religious beliefs or traditional notions to justify their stance. Ways that we could potentially make this issue more palatable to those who hold such religious beliefs or traditional notions include providing objective statistical facts about the structural inequality inherent in how restrooms exist today and the necessity to implement such changes in order to provide women the access they need in a timely manner. However, such a stance may come at the hefty cost of downplaying other reasons for adopting gender neutral restrooms such as creating more inclusive structures for LGBTQ and non-gender conforming individuals.
Kim,
Thank you for such an interesting post! Like Katie above, while I could see that women often take longer to use public restrooms than men, I was shocked to learn how the numbers come out in terms of minutes waiting. Though it seems obvious now that you say it, it makes complete sense why that is - the structural advantage of being able to put urinals along with regular bathroom stalls in technically the same amount of space. Of course men's lines are smaller because they have a larger capacity once one is in the restroom! Thinking about it that way, it makes a lot of sense to start making the transition to gender neutral bathrooms. Many of the bars in New York do have just a few gender neutral stalls, and now that I think about it, those lines never seemed as long as the ones when I was waited to use gendered bathrooms.
I do wonder how society in general would react to switching the default to gender neutral bathrooms rather than gendered ones? We've seen how horrible people have been to transgender youth who use the bathroom they feel most comfortable in. The way you laid out how much sense gender neutral bathrooms make, even just logistically speaking, would be, I hope, enough to quiet the naysayers.
Kim,
This was such an interesting post. I have honestly grown so accustomed to waiting to use the women's restroom (airports and clubs are the worst) that I never even considered a solution. This, however, is a great one. And now that I think of it, I've never waited to use the restroom at businesses with two gender neutral restrooms. You shared the short waiting period of 2 minutes or less for these restrooms, but I wonder why that is. Nonetheless, I'll take 2 minutes over 6 any day!
I 100% agree with you, Kim! Gender neutral bathrooms would work to minimize the inequalities that separate bathrooms perpetuate. I wrote a blog post about how the inclusion of diaper changing stations in women's bathrooms (and its exclusion in men's bathrooms) feeds into the stereotypical notion that women are responsible for taking care of their child. This design feature also excludes single fathers and gay parents. I believe that gender-neutral bathrooms may be the solution towards achieving "potty parity" creating a more inclusive atmosphere for everyone.
I've had a lot of conversations with friends and colleagues in the past about gender-neutral bathrooms, and while I love the idea, there are always a few people who are really against the idea. I've had male friends say they would be really uncomfortable with the idea of sharing a restroom with women because it would feel like an invasion of personal space. Others say they have no preference.
I feel like it's also important to note that adding gender-neutral restrooms doesn't mean you have to get rid of separate gendered restrooms. You can have both and let people use whatever makes them comfortable!
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