Why is that “about right”? It would seem to me that having two marked “unisex” would be the efficient solution. Yes there might be other criteria than efficiency, but efficiency seems to be what you’re implying, and you make no mention of any other.
What you propose is in fact the law in Austin, TX http://kxan.com/2014/08/28/austin-city-council-approves-gender-neutral-bathrooms/
I think this is best suited to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
In Japan, I have seen some convenience stores and restaurants have 2 single-seat restrooms. One is for “women” and the other is for “men or women”.
If there is a separate restroom for the disabled, they are marked “for anyone with priority given to disabled and others.”
In the UK, separate facilities are the norm, but this is changing (slowly).
In the late 80s when our brand new hospital opened, all the toilets were unisex. This lasted about a month before they were re-classified.
Last Saturday we had dinner at a newly opened restaurant (Prezzo) in town. They had three unisex stalls.
<anecdote>My new wife and I went to Paris in the 70s and she was a little disconcerted to have to walk behind a line of men using the urinal, to find a WC.<anecdote>
A restaurant I knew in Bozeman, MT had two rooms, labeled “Either” and “Or”.
The museum where I work now mostly has multi-stall restrooms, but there are a couple tucked in an out-of-the-way place (but close to the kiddie area) that are single-seaters. They have the standard “man” and “woman” silhouettes on the signs, but also say the word “unisex” below the icons. Presumably this is meant to appease both those who prefer segregated and those who prefer unisex.
At Starbucks in particular, I regularly see people going into the bathroom of the opposite sex if the ‘appropriate’ one is already occupied. I agree, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to just make them all unisex.
I used the identified women’s bathroom at a gas station recently. Apparently, someone had done something so horrible in the men’s that the employees were considering welding the door shut and not using it ever again. The employees just sent me to the unoccupied one.
As I was using it, I thought of this very question. Two identical bathrooms - why couldn’t they be unisex? What difference would it make?
This is an idea whose time has come.
Way back when Anita Bryant was getting all frothy at the mouth about unisex toilets, I’d wonder what she had at home.
But that really just changes the question from “why do businesses do it” to “why do building codes require it”. And I can’t see any reason - the goal of “potty parity” laws is to equalize the waiting time, and having 2 or 4 or 6 single-occupant rooms open for both men and women pretty much ensures that men and women will have the same average wait time.
Read some of the threads on transgender people and bathrooms. According to people in those threads, advocating for unisex bathrooms somehow harms transgender people. Also, apparently nobody WANTS unisex bathrooms, and people are comfortable with the sexual discrimination offered by today’s separate bathrooms, because both men and women have agreed to have separate bathrooms.
Because women take too long and men are disgusting slobs, pissing all over the place. To have to deal with both in the same closet would be too much to bear.
They jam up toilets when they are flushed. :rolleyes:
There’s a bar in Nebraska with two single seat bathrooms; they’re marked ‘Turtles’ and ‘Tortoises’ just to screw with people. 
Because men won’t put the seat down, so they are useless to women.
I’m a woman and I don’t want to see anyone’s used tampon out lying around where it shouldn’t be. Who would?? That’s what the trash is for. And as someone who cleans for a living, including commercial buildings, it’s awful to have to try to unclog toilets due the damn things. I don’t think either feeling makes me sexist.
As to the OP, I think it’s an old fashioned-ness type hold over. A lot of “we’ve never done it this” way, thrown in with some “Why aren’t you concerned for the fairer sex?” by a much older, stodgy generation. At least in the south.
There’s an upscale pub and grill in my town that went that route. One entire wall is lined with single-seat unisex restrooms, eight in all. No need to knock first as there’s a color coded indicator that shows when the door’s locked. It seems to me to be a great system.
This. I’ve worked on getting more gender neutral rest rooms into the workplace and run up against this. More specifically it was zoning law requiring some number of designated men’s rooms and some number of designated women’s rooms. Gender neutral rooms were allowed but don’t count towards any requirement.
Why just single-seaters be unisex? I don’t see any reason why multiple-stall bathrooms shouldn’t be unisex.
For small businesses, unisex single-seat toilets would be fine. But many times building codes require separate mens/womens. (A friend, a gourmet chef, once started a small, exclusive restaurant in a small building on the garden of his property. I seated, I believe, 19 customers, and employed himself, his spouse, & 2 helpers. It has a unisex, single-occupancy restroom. But the building inspector required that they have a separate restroom for the 4 staff members! Building codes are often behind the times.)
But for large crowds, like theatres or stadiums, there are several advantages to separating restrooms by gender. Mainly, you can have a mens room that is mostly urinals (take less space, & are cheaper) or even open troughs (much cheaper & faster to use). This leaves more space in the building to have womens restrooms with more cubicles.