Equality vs Equity: Observations while standing in line for the women’s restroom

I was extremely fortunate to see Hamilton live on stage last night. The show is phenomenal, inspiring, and deserves all the accolades it has received. My pain point as a user at the theater, however, came during intermission, when I had to stand in the seemingly-endless meandering line for the women’s restroom. There are two sets of restrooms in historic theater; one at the top floor, and one in the basement. Our seats were on the mezzanine level, so I went to the top floor restroom first. I didn’t have to go far to see that the line for the women’s restroom extended beyond the lobby of the top floor and down the stairs to the mezzanine level. Unsurprisingly, there were no lines for the men’s room. Disappointed, I decided to try my luck with the restrooms on the basement level. Again, I was met with a very long line of women filling the first floor lobby and going up one set of stairs then down the other. I had a decision to make: should I go back up to try the top floor restroom again or stay where I am waiting for the basement restroom? Both lines were long, but this one seemed to be moving at a fast pace, so I decided to stay in the line for the basement restroom. Looking over the banister of the stairs, it seemed like all of the women in the theater were waiting in line. Amazingly, once I finally reached the basement lobby, the line zigzagged back and forth in the tight space as if we were waiting for a ride at Disneyland. “This is a terrible user experience”, I repeatedly said to myself. In the end, I waited the entire fifteen-minute intermission and missed the first five minutes of Act Two in order to use the restroom. I returned to the seating area in the dark, making the poor people in my row stand up in the process so I could get back to my seat in the middle of the row.

Ever since I started my UX journey, I have noticed needed user experience improvements everywhere in everyday activities. This particular instance was unfortunately one that I have already had a lot of experience with in many environments: movies, concerts, sports stadiums, anywhere there is a large crowd. It is not a particularly new problem. So why, then, does this problem still persist if women everywhere have to constantly endure the arduous task of waiting in long lines simply for something as natural as using the toilet?

At this particular theater, there are an equal number of men’s and women’s restrooms. That’s equality. However, as men and women have different needs when using restrooms, what we really need is equity, or “potty parity” (I did not make this term up).  Women take longer to use the restroom because they have to enter a stall, often have more complicated clothing, and they menstruate. Taking everything into consideration, women simply need not only more restrooms but more stalls in order to have equity in public restroom access.

Toward the end of intermission, when there were fewer men coming to use their restroom sans lines, a theater worker directed some women to use the men’s room. While this was welcome relief for many, it came too late as I could see on the monitor that Act Two was already starting. Why couldn’t they have opened up the men’s room earlier, or have assigned three of the four restrooms to women and one to men? If some of the restrooms could be gender-neutral, it would also solve the problem for patrons who are non-binary or trans, which would be an equitable solution as well. More research would be needed to find other possible solutions, but we need to start somewhere.

According to this article from The Atlantic, part of the issue is that developers and builders don’t have financial incentive to build more restrooms. The costs are even higher and building codes more complex when it comes to historical buildings like the theater I was in last night.

It may seem like a trivial thing to focus on the relative number of men’s and women’s restrooms or stalls, but I would argue that this is not only an equity issue; it is a human rights issue. User experience focuses on the human experience and finding ways to improve life. What is more human than simply going to the toilet? Seen from a UX standpoint, it is high time we address the gender equity issue of “potty parity”.

Resources:

https://americanrestroom.org/potty-parity/

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/01/women-men-bathroom-lines-wait/580993/

https://time.com/3653871/womens-bathroom-lines-sexist-potty-parity/