Have you ever gone to use the toilet and seen a huge queue? More specifically, have you ever gone to use the women’s toilet and seen there’s a huge queue? Men, feel free to weigh in on this. Have you ever gone to use the toilet and walked past a queue of people waiting to use the women’s toilet? No? LIAR.
It’s a universal fact, there is ALWAYS a queue for the women’s bathroom. I use the toilet everywhere I go. Cafés, restaurants, museums, bars, cinemas, theatres, clubs, you name it, I have used the bathroom there and rare is the occasion I waltz in without having to wait for someone to finish. That’s a luxury predominantly reserved for men.
We women cannot simply ‘pop to the toilet’ or ‘nip to the loo’ in busy spaces. No. We must set aside ample time to relieve our bladders. We must depart for the commode before we even need it as preparation for the lengthy wait. Whereas men can be in and out in the time it takes to un-shell a pistachio. I watch them, sauntering past smugly, tank emptied, swigging from a 1.5L bottle of Evian, while I assess whether my navy trousers are dark enough to conceal me wetting myself.
I talk about women’s bathrooms a lot. So much so, you’d be forgiven for thinking I’m either a creep or have substantial gastric issues. One of those things is true, but neither is the reason I talk about women’s loos so much. Women use public bathrooms every single day. So, why are we always waiting? The answer isn’t so mysterious. It’s because the majority of our bathrooms have not been designed by the people actually using them. Most women’s bathrooms have been designed by men. And those men have not taken into account the many different bathroom-related experiences between the sexes.
Biologically, women have shorter urethras than men (the part of the body urine travels through after leaving the bladder), making us more prone to the devil that walks among us – UTIs. And when I have a UTI, I’m heading to the bathroom, on average, once a minute. Women are also more likely to suffer from overactive bladder syndrome, tend to have a smaller bladder capacity compared to men, and use the loo more frequently. It’s also normal for us to use the toilet more while menstruating to change products.
On a practical level, we usually have more clothes to take off and are always required to sit down rather than whacking it out and going full steam ahead. An example: on a West End trip recently, I chose to wear dungarees to the theatre, which turned out to be the worst idea since the decision to not have a spare key to the binocular locker on the Titanic.
At the interval, the queue to the women’s bathroom was the length of the Shard. The women in front of me were the epitome of efficiency. Everyone was conscious of the 452 other women standing with their legs crossed behind them. In the name of sisterhood, I went into one of the five cubicles with the same intention of efficiency. Inside, it took me so long to get my coat, hat, jumper, then dungarees off and back on again that someone actually came and pushed the door to make sure the cubicle wasn’t empty or whoever was inside hadn’t suffered a stroke. By the time I’d got everything back on, I needed the loo again because of my tiny, female bladder. So, logically, I decided to wear the same dungarees to the theatre the following night.
Once again, we were queuing from inside the bathroom, through two doors, around the wall outside, and up the stairs almost to the entrance of the theatre. All of us dutifully taking a spot in the line without question in the face of something we now expect. After I made it inside, the woman in the stall next to me slammed the door shut and said, “Come on, theatres, SORT OUT YOUR F***ING TOILETS.”
A YouGov UK study has, in recent years, shown that women take around 90 seconds to use the toilet, while men take around 40, meaning we take more than twice as long. It also highlights that 11% of men have reported queuing for public toilets in comparison to 59% of women. Besides having biologically smaller bladders, shorter urethras, and menstruating for up to seven days a month, AND having more clothes to shed, we can also have small children with us. And, as a rule of sisterhood, we like to go to the toilet in pairs or groups, sometimes for safety but also because the bathroom is our private space where we can bear our souls and our bladders simultaneously. Add into the mix that men have urinals, which are smaller, meaning there can be more of them, and they don’t require things that add small bits of time here and there, like opening, closing, and locking doors. Women need more toilets and more room.
Throughout history, the world of architecture has been, and still is, a male-dominated field. This means that society is designed with a predominantly male influence overlooking half the population, let alone those who don’t identify as either female or male. It leads to most women’s public bathrooms being designed with equal size and capacity to men’s, but equality is not the same as equity. And the bathroom isn’t the only space you’ll find this disparity.
The world designed by and for men is hiding in plain sight all around us. Smartphones are designed around the average size of a male hand, and office space temperatures frequently cater more to a man’s metabolic rate. But there are chunks of society designed for men that are less innocuous. Until recent years, men had a higher chance of surviving resuscitation because CPR mannequins were created to match the male body. Only in 2022 was an accurate female dummy created for car crash testing; until then, seatbelts were designed around the male physique. Scientific and military equipment is predominantly designed for male users, and most medical procedures are based on research on men, as it’s deemed ‘easier’.
That’s just a handful of examples. These things have flown under the radar for generations, quietly dictating women’s value and where society deems them to be accepted. And despite the old trope of ‘men are from Mars and women are from Venus’ which implies an acknowledgement that those two genders are different to one another, the way society is designed suggests the needs of women and their comfort are not serious enough to be accommodated for. Making the world even less safe for women than it already is. It seems the universal default norm is still male, turning a blind eye to 50% of the population, be that thoughtlessly or consciously.
But back to bladders and bathrooms.
A Guardian article on the aforementioned YouGov UK study says women would need more than a third more cubicles than men to account for the added time it takes us to use the lav.
So, what would an ideal women’s bathroom look like?
Well, besides needing a lot more cubicles, they need to be bigger. Big enough for our bags, and to fit more than one person in, be that a small child, men should also get bigger cubicles, as Dads and male caregivers should be taking their kids to the toilet 50% of the time.
We should have free period products in all cubicles or, at the very least, a free dispenser of pads and tampons – toilet paper and hand soap are free, so why is that not extended to products that are essential to maintaining the dignity, safety, and comfort of half the population? We also need bins for those products so we’re not flushing them, meaning we’re doing our bit for the environment.
These things are not luxuries. They are basic necessities that make people feel seen, understood, and valued in the community.
Nice big mirrors with Hollywood light bulbs wouldn’t go amiss, along with some soft, atmospheric background music and a delightful colour scheme – it’s a space that is always going to be used, why not make it practical AND pretty – and I want comfy sofas to lounge on as I put the world to rights with the model UN of women also using the loo. Those last few are luxuries.
Don’t get me wrong, on a night out, the loo queue for the ladies provides a great opportunity to bond with complete strangers and list all the reasons why I think we should start a commune, but I’d like to do that without gurning as I try not to wet myself. Until the world starts to update its designs to meet everyone’s basic toiletry needs rather than just one type of person, women will continue wasting time waiting for the loo when they could be out saving the world, inventing an environmentally-friendly jet pack that caters to all body shapes, or campaigning to eradicate FAKE POCKETS FROM CLOTHING. Look at what you’re keeping from humanity. Until then, I’ll do my bit to reduce queue times by never wearing dungarees in public again.
