POTTY PARITY!!
♫♫“Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.
Get up, stand up, don’t give up the fight♫♫
Bob Marley
Wage parity, gender equality, #METOO, #TIMESUP ; lack of women in leadership roles… is there no end to our battles? Well here’s another that women need to stand up (no pun intended) and fight for … potty parity.
Ladies you know what I’m talking about. We’ve all been there: sports arenas, movie theatres, concert halls – we’ve all waited an interminably long time for the bathroom, while the men did not!
Potty parity does not mean equal square footage or equal number of toilets for men and women. Potty parity is defined as equal speed of access to public restrooms.
There have been studies done that show women do take longer than men to use the restrooms, and it’s not because we are putting on our makeup or doing things in front of the mirror.
Recent research, out of the University of British Columbia, on potty parity, stated that current bathroom codes and designs in business facilities, like restaurants and convert venues, “are not based on objective analysis and are instead influenced by male bias.”
It’s yet another subtle, but powerful form of gender discrimination. #everydaysexism. When I started in this business in 1984, the executive floor of McLeod Young Weir had no women’s washrooms. At a dinner we were invited to women had to go down one floor to access a loo.
“The message to females is, “We don’t care about your needs; your needs don’t matter,” according to Kathryn Anthony, professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois, the foremost authority on this issue. It’s near and dear to her heart and “… to the hearts and bladders of women and children around the world.”
She’s dedicated much of her career to researching how some are disadvantaged by design – “housing, schools, work environments, and retail spaces have hidden biases that disadvantage by body, gender, and age.”
I understand friends snickering at my potty parity passion.it's a laughable term. But the issue is serious – this form of gender discrimination is a health concern. At least a quarter of all adult women are menstruating at any time. Women are also more likely to suffer from incontinence or have small children to attend to—stressful, debilitating issues when there's not an available restroom. Holding it can also result in digestive and urinary tract conditions.
There are a lot of people with invisible disabilities – overactive bladder, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, diverticulitis, Crohns disease – the lack of washrooms can cause many just to stay at home.
To Pee or not to Pee should not be a question still facing women today. It’s time for a cri de couer. In my early 20’s, I was inspired by Italian author and journalist, Oriana Fallaci, in 'Letter to a Child Never Born’. I share this passage as a reminder to keep fighting.
“And yet, or just for this reason, it’s so fascinating to be a woman. It’s an adventure that takes such courage, a challenge that’s never boring. You’ll have so many things to engage you if you’re born a woman. To begin with, you’ll have to struggle to maintain that if God exists he might even be an old woman with white hair or a beautiful girl. Then you’ll have to struggle to explain that it wasn’t sin that was born on the day when Eve picked an apple, what was born that day was a splendid virtue called disobedience.”