Do we understand how women use public bathrooms?
I hate public bathrooms. Everyone who knows me knows that too. I do everything I can to avoid going until I really, really have to. When I was little, my dad would warn me about “holding it up”. “You’re going to fall sick. It’s not good. You’ll develop kidney stones and it will be really, really painful.” he’d scold. But nothing, absolutely nothing could convince me that going to a public bathroom was a good idea.
Perhaps it was something to do with the idea of sharing a space that I’ve perceived as so uniquely private or perhaps it’s the fact that most bathrooms are not designed for women at all. Whatever it was, I think I carried the fear right into adulthood. Especially on trains. There is no way anyone could get me to go to the loo on the train. I remember once, on a 24-hour train journey from Bangalore to Mumbai, where I literally kept myself from drinking water for hours on end just hoping that I can last a little while longer before having to go for a wee. But eventually, I was forced to go when I couldn’t hold myself any longer. And it was a nightmarish experience; all with the carrying many, many sheets of tissue so that I don’t have to touch the door handle or the flush or tap.
It may seem like an OCD, but I tell you, it’s not. There’s a lot that we’ve got to learn about women’s bathrooms. And one of those facts is that most women, in case you are wondering, don’t go to the bathroom to only “relieve themselves”.
I remember walking into the bathroom in a pub in North London in 2007 on a freezing New Year’s eve. Squeezing between heavy-coated bodies swilling beer, my friend and I had made it all the way to the ground floor where the ladies room was. Then we found that not only was the line really long, but women had settled down around the sink, sipping on wine. The toilets were just unimaginably filthy. So many of the women simply sat around, exchanging stories, laughing at the situation. There was no toilet paper left, and no tampons or napkins for those who came looking for them.
Last year, taking the train from London to Cardiff, I realised nothing had changed in seven years. The toilets were filthy, had no running water in the sink and crumpled toilet paper strewn all over the floor. But that’s not London alone. In India, the lack of public sanitation facilities for women has been widely debated. Near my former work place in Domlur, Bangalore, the public toilet facilities that were available for men and women were so bad limited that poor women would try to seek out uninhabitable spaces like garbage dumps to relieve themselves. Recently, I found that a “Toilet finder” apps have taken off in India and globally to help women locate bathrooms near them.
This is not uncommon. The lack of sanitary napkins or tampons in bathrooms has always astounded me. Who did they think they were making bathrooms for? A few weeks ago when I got my period at work, I freaked out. Usually, I use an app called “My Days” to track my dates but it was one of those days that I forgot. Between the blood gushing down my legs soaking my pants and frantically running into both the women’s bathrooms on the floor looking for sanitary napkins, I was perspiring with anxiety. I literally unravelled whatever toilet paper that was left and took some paper towels to stuff into my underwear to take care of the bleeding until I could get home and change. I shudder to think what it must be for a woman who has no access to any facilities.
Let me admit that it’s not just ‘women’s bathrooms’ that need an overhaul world over. It’s the way we look at bathrooms in general. Recently, bathroom access has been the topic of conversation in the media with transgender employees in various workplaces and trans children facing discrimination when wanting to use a bathroom that corresponds to their identity. Even in men’s rooms, there are little or no options for diaper changing (what do fathers do?). Some dads still think diaper changing stations in men’s rooms are a bad idea. Few bathrooms, as far as I know, take into account the health, hygiene and safety of its users. I’ve walked into so many common bathrooms where women struggle to nurse babies, pump breast milk, change diapers, find sanitary napkins, deal with bouts of nausea or morning sickness. I don’t even want to get into what it must be for pregnant women in the workplace who simply can’t “hover” over filthy potties.
Perhaps this seems like a rather insignificant issue if you aren’t an individual who has ever faced an issue going to a public bathroom. But think about this; over 1 billion people today defecate in the open because they have no access to sanitation facilities. And of these there are around 800 million women between the ages of 15–49 who have no access to clean facilities to manage their menstrual cycles. This is 2015. Isn’t the conversation over gender-inclusive public restroom facilities long overdue?
