Public toilets through the lens of Menstrual Equity
Figure 1. Definition of Equity vs. Equality
By Jenna Wheeler
What is meant by “menstrual equity”? In order to define this phrase, we must first back up and decode the word “equity”. We all know what menstrual means, as in referring to menstruation, but what of equity and how does it play into gender division of public toilets? Why is it important to consider? How is it the basis of gender equality? In this paper, I will attempt to explain why menstruation is at the core of gender equity and how public bathrooms provide the perfect platform for social justice and social reform through that lens.
Although this is a global issue, given at any one time, fully one-quarter of the global population of adult women are menstruating (Schmitt et al. 3), this paper’s perspective will be derived primarily from the US context with some examples from the UK, since that is where the flushing toilet as we know it made its inaugural debut. Both the US and the UK represent the Western world, the industrialized world, the countries that were the forerunners of and thereby the most impacted by the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century and beyond. Impacts that influenced gender inequity in public toilets, for that is where this story begins.
Victorian Influences
At the beginning of the 19th century when the Industrial Revolution in America was beginning to take hold of the urban landscape, its consequential impact of immense economic change resulted in a separation of worlds for men and women, coined a “division of spheres” (Kogan, “Sex Separation: The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety” 146). Prior to this division, “both men and women worked at home, a space devoted not only to rearing the family but also to retail business and professional practice (155).” Once manufacturing moved to the urban core, the home was no longer the primary workplace, and a disruption in the fabric of homelife began where the “division of spheres” translated to a distinction between public realm and private realm (146). What resulted was what modern women are all too familiar with in their fight for equal rights: the public realm became that of men and the private realm became that of women. Along with this newly minted allocation for women came a redefined role, that of being stable and moral, maintaining religious sensibilities. While men tackled the unstable, changing world of technology and industrialism, the public realm, women were tasked with staying home to uphold the stability and morality of the home, the private realm.
This ideology of the home being a distinct sphere for women became known as the “cult of true womanhood” (Kogan, “Sex Separation: The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety” 147). Maintaining this sphere helped ease the social anxieties of the time due to unprecedented changes in the economy and culture. When women ventured beyond their domicile, whether for work, shopping, or entertainment, a ripple of concern domino-ed through many of the general populace, because seeing women in the public realm indicated a “living contradiction of the cult of true womanhood (147).” Given this, it is no wonder there was resistance to providing adequate, public toilet provision for women, as both men and women embraced this Victorian mandate.
In concert with this theme of “the cult of true womanhood” came Victorian sensibilities around privacy and modesty. As the middle class emerged due to the prevalence of manufactured goods that the industrial revolution promoted, the distinction between classes became more pronounced and attitudes around cleanliness and morality coincided. Soon the lower class, the poor, and immigrants were considered to be dirty and with a low sense of morality (Rehman 190), while the middle and upper classes were considered clean and the arbiters of purity and religious morality, especially in the domain of women.
With cities becoming populated resulting from the workplace moving from home to city, hygiene practices came into question as smells and sounds associated with the body became pronounced with the abundance of people. Attitudes around cleanliness began shifting with both the emergence of the city and of the middle class. What was once considered normal toilet and hygiene behavior before the height of the industrial revolution, for example men, women, and children urinating in the street gutters (Greed, “The Historical Development of Public Toilets” 48) and bathing but once a month, gradually became seen as dirty and immoral. “Hygiene practices and class [became] inextricably linked (Gelman Taylor 47).” A disembodiment around human biology and its elimination processes, from urinating to defecating, passing gas to menstruating, became part of the social structure and hierarchy (Plaskow 59). Concurrent with this disassociation came the stigma of shame and disgust. And “the higher people [were] on the social ladder, the more they [were] expected to act as if they [were] disembodied” (59).
Gendered Public Toilets
With industrialization came the expansion and population growth of cities which created demand for better sanitation (Greed, “The Historical Development of Public Toilets” 34). With men dominating the public realm, gendered public toilets were introduced as early as the 1820’s in Scotland (Gershenson and Penner 5) and more commonly in the mid-19th century in both the US and UK, where “gendered” refers to men only. In all three countries, public toilets for women were generally not built until much later (upwards of 40 or more years) and, in some instances, with significant effort and activism around the turn of the 20th century (5).
According to scholar Clara Greed, public toilets for women were intentionally nonexistent in the 19th and early 20th centuries as a means of controlling their movement, quite literally to keep them at home so that the desired separation could be maintained between the women’s domain and men’s (Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 121). Women had their domestic sphere, and they were to conform with the notions surrounding that sphere. Creating a public toilet for women in the “city of man” (121) would not only threaten that core vision, it would also cast nefarious shadows on any woman daring to be out in public, disrupting the “cult of true womanhood” and distorting her image to that of a “public woman”, an undesirable (Gershenson and Penner 6). Adding in the complication and cultural stigma around elimination processes, specifically as it relates to women’s biology and menstruation, this notion of separate domains was reinforced. With little or no provisions in the City, women were more often forced to stay home.
Advances Made in Public Toilets for Women
Despite industrialized cities and Victorian values catering to men, there was still a lot of movement that women conducted outside of their domestic sphere. Whether it be for shopping or a trip to the theatre or joining the workforce, it became clear that women needed to be accommodated in the public realm as much, if not more so, than men, although it would take another century for bathroom equity legislation to make the headlines.
In London, England, the effort to gain public toilets for women was spearheaded by the Ladies’ Sanitary Association. Starting in the 1850’s, shortly after the infamous display of George Jenner’s flushing toilet at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the LSA campaigned for public toilets for women in both the public realm at high-traffic intersections and in the workplace. They made minor headway over the decades, but it wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that their diligence really paid off, as one site in particular was targeted for a women’s public bathroom at the corners of Park and Camden High Streets in the vestry of St. Pancras (Penner 35).
Initially approved with a wooden model constructed at the site, a local group of concerned citizens (comprised primarily of men) petitioned the local government to end the construction. Reasons cited were that such a facility would lower property values, that there was no need for this facility, because local women shoppers lived in the area and could relieve themselves at their homes (a false claim made up by the male constituent), and that it was an “abomination” that no one would want to live near. The group’s efforts paid off, initially, and the construction ceased, despite the persistence of the sole woman council member as well as one of the male members, George Bernard Shaw, the famous Irish playwright who was quite politically active. Five years later, as a result of a report conducted by the Highways, Sewers, and Public Works committee combined with a formal inquiry on behalf of a Mrs. Miall Smith, the project was revived and a women’s public bathroom was built (Penner 40).
Meanwhile, across the seas in America, many state jurisdictions were amending their constitutions with sanitation acts to accommodate women in the workplace based on the precedent of the first law passed in 1887 that required sex-segregated toilets that took place in Massachusetts over a decade prior to the Camden High Street toilets. The law’s namesake, “An Act to Secure Proper Sanitary Provisions in Factories and Workshops”, required that “suitable and proper wash-rooms and water-closets shall be provided for females where employed, and the water-closets used by females shall be separate and apart from those used by males” (Kogan, “Sex Separation: The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety” 145). Here again, as much as Victorian values would prefer to turn a blind eye to a woman stepping outside her domestic sphere, the reality was that more and more women were entering the workforce, and either there were no sanitary provisions made for these women or they were forced to share toilet facilities with men.
As Victorian rules around modesty and decorum were deeply entrenched in the culture, and there was a concurrent belief that women were the weaker sex and needed protecting, that their modesty and purity needed protecting, and so as to not disrupt the “division of spheres” between men and women, this landmark legislation was interestingly initiated by male policymakers. So committed were they to this ideology of separate spheres that prior to the passage of this law, planners had enacted regulations mandating separate spaces for women in public buildings that ranged from department stores to hotels, restaurants to post offices, banks to libraries, and even railroad cars (Kogan, “Sex Separation: The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety” 151). These places were dedicated to women and were furnished and adorned as if in a woman’s domicile. Reading rooms in public libraries were afforded a separate, discreet access to a bathroom that was otherwise not visible to others using the reading room (148). Citing scholar Abigail Van Slyck’s explanation that gives cogent insight into the policymakers’ motivations:
“Ladies’ reading rooms established in American public libraries in the late 19th century did not welcome women as full participants in the public sphere. Rather they played an active role in reproducing a particular set of gender assumptions (151).”
By seemingly appeasing the ‘weaker sex’ in providing their own special rooms, rooms that were distinctly separate from the rest of the public building to which they were a part of, women were at once both revered as warranting such special space, to keep up appearances of inclusivity, and simultaneously kept hidden and dismissed, so as to maintain the status quo of men remaining hierarchically dominant. It stands to reason that with such abjection, an underlying shame would accompany one’s experience of said “special space.” As Pakistani author Bushra Rehman astutely notes, “The dominant culture knows that if you can make people feel shame, you can make them do anything (Rehman 191).” In the case of providing special spaces masked in a homey décor, the intended result was of keeping women in their place, in the separate sphere, in order for men, primarily, to make sense of the constantly changing, chaotic world foisted upon them and retain dominance.
With growth and expansion being a unilateral universal driver in the history of humanity, the public realm in America eventually saw the establishment of a sex-segregated bathroom mandate for new buildings in the adoption and publishing of the US’s first Uniform Building Code. In 1927, the nation’s first UBC required that bathrooms be gender-segregated in “Group H buildings (hotels, apartments house, dormitories, lodging houses, convents, monasteries and old people’s homes (Kogan, “Code: History”).” Chapter 13, section 1305 stated the following code language: “Every building shall be provided with at least one toilet. Every building and each subdivision thereof where both sexes are accommodated shall be provided with at least two toilets located in such building and one toilet shall be conspicuously marked “For Women” and the other conspicuously marked “For Men” (Kogan, “Code: History”).”
This marked an official beginning to what appeared to level the playing field and bring what appeared to be public toilet equality between the sexes, but old patterns and beliefs die hard: it would be another 80 years or so before public toilet equity would enter the sanctioned conversation. Add another decade to that and the conversation would begin to include “menstrual equity” (Crawford et al.).
Design Standards of Early Public Toilets
Scholar Barbara Penner makes this succinct inquiry in one of her articles: “From long queuing times to cramped cubicles, why has design for women public toilets been so rarely considered in the last century (Gershenson and Penner 24)?” With its roots steeped in accommodating men before women were an equal counterpart to the workforce, the layout of a public toilet stall was never designed with the unique biological needs of women in mind. (Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 124) One reason for this egregious oversight, that continues to this day, is due to the prominent male dominance prevalent in the water and sanitation engineering fields, the very people who steer the conversation around toilet design (Schmitt et al. 2). Put another way, “toilet design remains deeply, if not invisibly, shaped by masculinist conventions (Gershenson and Penner 24).” Conventions so pervasive that even women who are in these professions, and who are menstruating, may turn a blind eye to women’s unique toilet needs (Schmitt et al. 2). Why? What is this about?
On the one hand, there were the Victorian cultural protocols that accompanied the introduction of female public toilets, but on the other hand, as time wore on, and women became more liberated and engaged as an integral part of the voting public and workforce, public toilet policy and design continued to perpetuate the outdated precepts of the past. Design of underground public toilets found in UK cities was based on the “perceived needs of a healthy young males (with narrow hips)” (Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 125). Early toilet design was not any different in the US, where “women daily confront[ed] spaces based on the needs of healthy male bodies” (Plaskow 54). From the onset, men’s public toilets were designed with twice the number of fixtures (toilets and urinals) than women’s (Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 118). The underlying theme of controlling women’s movements was still at play despite advances in legislation and code regulations. But it goes deeper than this, to the cultural stigma and embarrassment surrounding the “human embodiment of elimination” (Plaskow) specifically targeted at women’s biology with menstruation being a particularly hidden player.
Cultural Stigma around Women’s Biology
Scholar Judith Plaskow explores the historical context of shame and disgust around all modes of elimination noting that “excretion seems to be consigned to the shadows” (52), menstruation being one of the key bodily functions that people in general shy away from discussing. Furthermore, she proposes that “the subject of elimination is deeply gendered… [where] women are indelibly linked” (59) to bathroom behavior: from menstruation to pregnancy to nursing to mothering to care-taking the elderly or disabled, there is an integral, defining relationship between women and the bathroom. And many of the activities women engage in in the bathroom are marked by different aspects of elimination, whether it be urinating, defecating, bleeding, nursing, or aiding a child or elder with their bathroom needs. With the disassociation of bodily functions that developed in Victorian society, is it any wonder there is such a negative stigma surrounding menstruation, let alone the rest of a woman’s biology?
Men attempted controlling the movement of women by restricting access to the public realm, to public toilets, adopting a similar attitude as the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that the Clinton administration imposed on gay and lesbian members of the military in the 1980’s. As if keeping things hidden will enhance one’s experience of life, pretending something so primary doesn’t exist? How is this fair and respectful? Furthermore, how does this perpetuate a healthy populace that doesn’t resort to subversive behaviors?
Judith Plaskow intelligently points out that “access to toilets is a prerequisite for full public participation and citizenship” and that “the absence of women’s toilets clearly reflects the exclusion of women from public power and public space” (52). Renowned scholar Clara Greed further argues that “lack of toilet provision hampers women’s mobility and their chances of traveling and working, especially if there are no facilities for menstruating women” (Greed, “Taking Women’s Bodily Functions into Account in Urban Planning and Policy” 4). A point well worthy of consideration, as biologically-born women make up more than half the global population, and of that portion, girls, women, and transgender boys and men are menstruating for easily 30 – 40 years of their lives. That’s a lot of negating going on by the “dominant” class of men that comprise the policymakers, planners, politicians, sanitation engineers, and plumbing designers. Then the question becomes why do women not stand up and fight for their rights and make a stink about this flagrant inequity? In part, it comes down to laying down the stigma around women’s natural bodily functions, and this comes through education, activism, and a concerted effort on all parties of the human race to embrace the truth with dignity and reveal what has been “consigned to the shadows.”
Creating a More Inclusive Public Toilet
It is well documented that women take longer in the public bathroom than men for both biological and cultural reasons. Biologically, women take twice as long to urinate because of the obvious barrier of clothing that must be removed followed by affixing the toilet seat cover, sitting, wiping, and then reversing those steps to get back out of the toilet stall. Menstruation adds additional time with managing the changing of a pad or tampon, disposing of it, and taking needed measures for adequate cleaning. Not to mention more frequent visits to the loo that is typical for the first few days of one’s flow. Add in pregnancy which often creates more frequent visits to the bathroom, nursing a baby if the mother is uneasy with or restricted from doing so in a more public manner, and urinary tract infections that affect women at twice the rate of men, causing more frequent toilet usage. Fully “30% of women between the ages of 15 and 64 may suffer some form of urinary incontinence as opposed to between 1.5% and 5% of men (Plaskow 54).” And those are only the biological reasons. Culturally speaking, women tend to be tasked with tending to babies’ and children’s toileting needs which may include navigating a stroller or other equipment, with assisting the elderly and disabled (who may have the added burden of needing assistance with their toileting needs), and managing shopping bags from the day’s errands (54), (Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 119).
Scholar Clara Greed has assembled a consummate list of requirements needed to accommodate women and menstruators in the public toilet with all of their biological and cultural needs met.
- Starting with the door, there should be a minimum of 250 mm (9.8 in.) between the front edge of the toilet and edge of the in-swung door.
- The gap between the floor and the bottom of the door and toilet partitions should be changed from the standard male toilet stall design to be low to the floor or nonexistent. “Women need privacy, not surveillance (Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 135).”
- There should be adequate space to sit down without touching the walls and without unnecessary protrusions like a tacked-on plastic bin for menstrual product disposal. Instead, the disposal bin can be integrated into the back wall of the stall, and there would be a 450 mm (17.7 in.) diameter around the toilet free of any protruding objects, e.g. toilet paper dispensers, toilet seat cover dispensers, shelves, etc.
- Offering a bidet or squat type of toilet with access to water for cleansing would benefit menstruators as well as those accustomed to squatting and using water instead of toilet paper to clean themselves.
- Toilet paper should be soft, not scratchy, and should be easily attainable off a roll and not miserly dispersed through tiny square pieces or hard to obtain because the roller is intentionally sticky.
- Ideally, the toilet stall would have all the necessary facilities for cleaning up within the cubicle itself, e.g. hygienic soap, hot water, paper towels, and an adequate supply of menstrual products. Having these supplies would greatly help those who are menstruating as well as those with children or those suffering from diarrhea.
- Automatic cubicle door opening and closing, flushing water, and touchless faucets all would aid women with any of the biological or cultural needs listed.
- If the toilet facility opens directly onto a public way, then add a peek hole from inside so the user can look out before leaving in order to feel safe. Ideally, there would be a transition space between the stall and outside of it.
(Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 133–38)
- Lastly, as an adjunct from another female toilet activist group, include hooks or shelves that can keep personal belongings off the floor, and add a full-length mirror so one can check for any bleeding through from one’s menstrual cycle (Schmitt et al. 5).
All of these requirements combined may seem overwhelming at first, but if there is to be equity in women’s public toilets, not just equality, that will require taking into account all of these factors that conjoin women in daily life that follows them wherever they go, especially in the public realm.
Public Toilets for Women as a Platform for Social Justice
As articulated by scholars Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner:
“Changes to the existing toilet arrangements are explosive because they recognize, accommodate, and hence, legitimate the presence of a social group who customarily ‘make do’ and remain invisible at the level of representation (Gershenson and Penner 9).
Gendered public toilets for women and menstruators, then, have become a legitimate platform for social justice and social reform, because of their apparent invisibility at “the level of representation”, i.e. through policies and laws. Here, change is both needed in the design approach to ensure the safety and dignity of individuals on their period and in the cultural subconscious whereby the images associated with this unique biology are no longer shunned and expected to remain hidden, but to be acknowledged as a fundamental human right.
As one can surmise from the aforementioned list of proposed accommodations for women and menstruators in public toilets, the amount of space required far exceeds the space required for men’s public toilets. The undisputable fact that men and women have “different biological characteristics… [implies] different types and degrees of spatial need (Molotch 5).” In 1927 with the issuance of the first UBC that mandated both women and men be allocated separate toilets, the nuance of how to create the space was unconsciously (or perhaps subconsciously) omitted, simply because there wasn’t adequate data of women’s needs given the cultural overtones of modesty and separate spheres ideology that continued to endure long past the Victorian era ended. As sociologist Harvey Molotch points out, “to provide equality for individual men and individual women, unequal resources must be distributed by the two groups (6).” He further argues that the provision of public toilets, or lack thereof, can be seen as a form of “sex discrimination” where women’s toileting “needs and uses, distributing space equally between men’s and ladies’ rooms actually produces ‘an unequal result’ (Gershenson and Penner 12).” From an affirmative action perspective, Molotch continues that unless there is a demand for societal change, “only an ‘asymmetric distribution of space’ will improve the situation and provide ‘equality of opportunity’ among the genders (12).”
Potty Parity Laws
“Toilets are best seen as spaces of representation (Gershenson and Penner 10).”
As previously discussed, the first national, official mandate on gender segregated toilets in America was with the inaugural issuance of the UBC in 1927. Incorporation of the code regulations for separate gendered toilets was slow to take hold, and the code only applied to new buildings, which meant older buildings that pre-dated the decree were not required to update their bathrooms to conform with it.
As women continued to enter the workforce and began to be represented in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, the disparity between women’s public toilets and men’s continued, where “toilet design and distribution both reflect[ed] and enforce[ed] gender norms (Plaskow 56).” In 1962, however, a group of female legislators from the US House of Representatives petitioned for and were granted a powder room and lounge for their exclusive use located on the first floor of the Capitol. The lounge included the only women’s toilet in the building. There were 20 congresswomen at the time with 2 senators and 18 House members.
Though it was a small victory for the women representatives, it still carried with it the message that women were to be kept out of the way and hidden. Accessing the lounge from the House Chamber required going down a hall that was open to tourists or going through the minority leader’s quarters which then emptied into a long, winding corridor. By contrast, the men’s bathroom was conveniently located a mere few feet away from the House Chamber (Plaskow 53). This same lounge and toilet would serve women legislators for another 49 years when in 2011, they were finally granted an exclusive women’s restroom off the House floor, as conveniently located as the men’s restroom. In 2011, there were a total of 90 congresswomen with 17 senators and 73 House members.
US women senators shares a similar story where they, too, did not have the privilege of having a dedicated women’s bathroom adjacent to the US senate floor until 1992. Instead, they were forced to use the same facilities as tourists on a lower floor. This resulted in two meaningful consequences: 1) the possibility of missing a vote in the event of absence due to one’s biological need, and 2) the conveyance of the insidious message that women don’t belong in the Senate, that men are the “rightful occupant” (Gershenson and Penner 9).
Meanwhile, New York State made headlines with their first attempt at equitable gendered bathrooms with their landmark “Potty Parity” legislation in 1989. The statute attempted creating restroom equality for men and women in new public buildings and mandated that there be an equal number of “sanitary fixtures” for both sexes. The previous law had made a distinction between urinals and toilets, so men and women had access to the same number of toilets but had unequal access to “sanitary fixtures”. A mere 16 years later in 2005, the New York City Council unanimously approved “The Women’s Restroom Equity Bill” where a ratio of 2:1 of women’s bathrooms to men’s bathrooms in most new buildings was required. Previously, the requirement was a 1:1 ratio.
Slowly but surely, our modern culture is demanding societal change, and not surprisingly, the public toilet is at the intersection of that change.
“The Ground on Which We All Stand”
(Crawford et al.)
Where would we be without menstruation? We would not exist as a species without menstruation. It is that fundamental and primordial to the human species, quite literally “the ground on which we all stand (ibid).” And yet, in our modern day and age and for millennia, there was and continues to be stigma, shame, and even disgust expressed around menstruation. The Victorian ideology of “separate spheres” and disassociation from one’s human bodily functions plays a big part in this modern-day repression. But there are other factors at play, religious and cultural, around the world. There are passages in the bible that imply that menstruation is dirty and sinful; in Jewish culture, there are strict rules around when and when not to be in contact with a woman menstruating; in Buddhism, the belief is women lose their life force during menstruation; in Islam, a menstruating woman can’t touch the holy Quran, enter a mosque, or participate in ritual prayer; and the list goes on (Weiss-Wolf). As author and activist Jennifer Weiss-Wolf keenly surmises, “It may be appropriate to say periods have been stigmatized for as long as patriarchy has been around (ibid).”
Periods are at the intersection of so many under-represented groups of people, in gender, age, race, and class, across the globe. Periods touch the lives of nearly half the global population if statistics are true that 49.6% of the world populace are born into this word as biologically female. That is a large number to be so quickly dismissed and unaccounted for in the world of policymakers. Jennifer Weiss-Wolf wisely admonishes “we’ll never have gender equality [and gender equity] if we don’t talk about periods (ibid).”
Access to safe and adequate public toilets for women and all menstruators is the place where gender equality and gender equity can shine. Returning to the first question posed in this paper, what is meant by “menstrual equity”? Here is the answer:
“Menstrual Equity refers to the idea that society needs to recognize openly (and without shame or stigma) and take into account the fact that about half the population menstruates for a large portion of their lives (Crawford et al. 343).”
Going back to the equality vs. equity conversation, there are distinct differences between the two concepts. “Equality demands the same treatment for all people, regardless of their differences. Equity seeks fair treatment for all people, in light of their differences (Crawford et al. 343–44).” Throughout the US and UK histories, there have been inadequate toilet provision for many marginalized groups, from minority groups to women, from factory workers to the disabled and elderly, from transgender to the homeless. Lack of public toilets for these groups carry a strong message that they are “outsiders to the body politic and that there is no room for them in public space (Plaskow 61).” These groups could band together under the banner of Menstrual Equity and create a strong coalition to raise awareness and ultimately to change the culture around public toilets to be one of inclusivity where all members of society are embraced and encouraged to fully participate in public life and no longer be invisible. And policymakers would embark on creating equitable access to public toilets for women and menstruators alike.
Bibliography
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Image Source
Figure 1. http://www.metrocouncil.org/About-Us/why-we-matter/Equity.aspx
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