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In 1987, a man, a woman, and their daughter attended a Tchaikovsky concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The most notable thing about their outing, all these years later, is something that actually wasn't the least bit unusual: The two women waited in an interminably long line for the bathroom, while the man did not.
What separates their uncomfortable experience from those of innumerable others is that the man in their party was a California state senator. After witnessing just how long his family members had to wait, he introduced legislation to guarantee the state's women more toilets.
In the three decades since, dozens of cities and states have joined the cause of "potty parity," the somewhat trivializing nickname for the goal of giving men and women equal access to public toilets. These legislative efforts, along with changes to plumbing codes that altered the ratio of men's to women's toilets, have certainly helped imbalances in wait times, but they haven't come close to resolving them.
"It still remains a huge problem today, overall," says Kathryn Anthony, an architecture professor at the University of Illinois who has studied the issue for more than a decade. The issue persists for many reasons: the exigencies of real estate, the building codes that govern construction, and, of course, sexism.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/01/women-men-bathroom-lines-wait/580993/
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @12:16AM (5 children)
I'll just change the gender I identify as to the bathroom with the shortest line.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Moof123 on Monday February 04 2019, @05:00AM (4 children)
+1. Make all bathrooms unisex. I see dads bring their little girls in with them (no choice) and it is never an issue. Why should grown ass women not be allowed to come on in and out the often empty Men’s stalls to good use?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @05:51AM (2 children)
Make the walls taller and lower in stalls to reduce peaking, and make the stall "room" itself unisex. Then make the urinals in a diff room.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @06:43AM (1 child)
The short doors and big gaps are actually a code requirement. Fun fact is that the were originally put in to try to prevent junkies from shooting up in public bathrooms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @10:56AM
American toilet cubicles are sooooo weird. Somehow all of Europe manages with privacy.
My favourite toilets I've seen are a block of completely separate rooms, each with a toilet, sink and dryer and a proper door. And they didn't take significantly more space than the equivalent number of cubicles and basins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 04 2019, @01:22PM
Around here they do. They just walk in behind you to get to the toilets.
I can't say that I care. It's just different plumbing.