I work in building maintenance. Years ago when they built bathrooms for say an office they built them equal. Say 3 toilets in each. They then suddenly realized women require more and bigger bathrooms and hence, started to create and expand the womens bathrooms. I think the current ratio is about 2:1.
Now on to building temperature. I only realized that the temperatures I was setting rooms for was sexist. I was setting the comfort level for me being a middle aged male. I didnt take into account women tend to feel colder and hence, require a warmer room. Practically every womans office had a space heater. This is worse with air conditioning because in an office setting men wear suits even in the summer and are warmer while women wear sleeveless outfits and are hence cold. This is also why when couples go out often the women end up wearing their mans jacket.
That’s a bunch of crap. I am a woman and I don’t need extra heat. Most offices are too hot for me. And probably the reason they need more toilets is because more women work there. Just saying.
Years ago, I worked in an office with two women who did nothing but complain all summer long about how chilly they were, as if having a/c in a very large downtown office tower was somehow a surprise, day after day. I’m not sure why the option of wearing a little sweater eluded them.
I tend to run warm, and at my last job kept a small fan by my desk. In an office staffed by mostly middle aged women, I wasn’t the only one, though there were people who were too cool as well. Office HVAC could be inconsistent.
I am male, and most often tend to be cool at the office - summer or winter. Have worn out the elbows on at least 3 cardigans in my 30+ working years. Can’t imagine why someone would wear no sleeves and no leg coverings, and expect temps to accommodate them. That is, unless I were allowed to wear shorts, sleeveless Ts, and sandals…
I always figured that mens’ rooms had more “stations” (urinals + stools) than womens’ rooms had stools. And my impression has been that - on average - women take longer to use the bathroom. So, of course, there should be more women’s rooms at most public venues. The lines at womens’ rooms at theaters or sporting events has always struck me as an inconceivable inconvenience. Almost solely enough to make me glad to be male rather than female! (In jest, of course. But it is just crazy when an intermission comes, my wife goes to stand in a line, I use the bathroom and finish, and she might still be waiting outside of the bathroom.)
Of course, to put in more stools, the women might lose their fainting couches and floral displays!
The question of fair allocation of restroom facilities is a difficult one. Do you equalize by floor space, by number of fixtures, or by expected wait time? And if the latter, do you take into account the proportion of men and women who are expected to be using the facilities? That last can get complicated: More men than women are likely to attend sporting events, but if you put in a mix of bathrooms that leads to equal wait times during a football game, then what happens when there’s an Indigo Girls concert in the stadium the next week?
The answer of course is unisex bathrooms, but that is a big cultural leap (at least in the US). Might have to lose the urinals, and if those are spaced more closely than stalls you’ll lose some stations, but I’d guess the overall throughput would increase.
I agree - or at least include a predominant number of unisex, with single sex options for those who strongly prefer.
More than once I’ve heard women speak of “stage fright” in overly quiet bathrooms (maybe just unique to my generally heterosexual female friends/family). I can imagine those same women preferring not to fart/splat/tinkle where that would be readily audible to men.
I imagine there is some non-zero percentage of mancreeps who would get their jollies out of eyeing women as they exit the stalls, or catching peeks through the cracks along the stall doors…
On a pure maintenance level I can design a toilet stall that can be swapped out for a urinal if they decide to switch a mens bathroom to a womans or vise versa. This way one can change the bathrooms if the gender balance of an office changes.
Also I for one, make sure the feminine product dispensers always work and our staff make sure they are always fully stocked with fresh product.
I realize when I set them I have a man in general do the sound checks. So I set it on that for things like tone and volume. Well a womans voice is a different tone and can come across poorly on those.
The sexist thing isn’t considering the slightly different needs of men and women in restrooms. Its writing things where the word “women” seems to come across interchangeably with “bitches.”
I’m sure it’s in any number of places, but I was at a brewery in Minneapolis recently that has quite deftly handled the whole bathroom minefield. They have only one bathroom. It is set up with the sinks and mirrors in a common central area and something like 7 or 8 actual doors that open into toilet cubicles, not stalls. The walls are made of brick so when you use the toilet, you are in your own little soundproof room. No chance of being overheard and no gaps to fear a prying eye. It may not scale up very well, but for the traffic that brewery gets, it seemed to work quite well.
I’m a woman and I hate overly warm rooms. Yuck. I’d much rather wear a sweater. My mother and my sister are the same way. My dad’s the opposite – go figure.
