Not enough toilets in theatres. For women

[RedToothBrush]

Hands up. Who is remotely surprised by this...?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-46735513
Women's toilets an issue for West End theatres

A survey of West End theatres has found there is an average of just one toilet for every 38 female audience members.

The research by The Stage calculated that women would need a 57-minute interval to all visit the bathroom. The average interval is 20 minutes.

The Old Vic had the fewest with one toilet for every 56 women.

Many theatres struggle to increase the number of toilets due to their buildings having listed status and the Old Vic is a Grade II-listed building.

The theatre recently launched a £100,000 public fundraising campaign to improve the toilets and access to the theatre featuring Glenda Jackson and Joanna Lumley.

The works will more than double the number of female loos. They have so far raised £52,482.

My husbands office is 5ish minutes from a local theatre

I find it quicker to go for a wee there

If he is with us of course, otherwise the queue is huge and i have to move fast..

More loos woukd be awesome maybe changing one of the gents would help in bigger theatres

I think it's ridiculous that planning permission for vital things such as toilets in theatres is so restricted just because a building is listed. What's the point in protecting a building that is still used, to the extent that it doesn't meet the needs of the people using it?

Northernlass, not sure what you mean.

Men and women have different requirements when it comes to sanitation facilities. And women's requirements are not being met.

I saw this on twitter earlier. Uniformly, the comments were a variation on 'So?' And someone was punting for this being a reason for unisex loos.

Redroach, I'm sure there are ways around the planning issue, especially given as a pp said it's been done in historic universities.

Also, when our theatre, which is definitely under planning protection, was renovated and refurbished, they made all kinds of really quite significant structural changes. None of which included installing enough toilets for paying woman patrons. Given that they knocked down walls all over the place and changed the frontage dramatically, and all of this was ok, I can only draw the conclusion that they don't give enough of a damn about women to provide adequate facilities for us. I suspect the same is true of most places.

*reddeadroach I mean

It's because women are used to queuing quietly, not making a fuss etc

Massive queues for teh ladies are seen as a fact of life> it feels normal that men nip in and out while women have massive queues.

When provision gets subpar / at different stages of life, inadequate faciltiies mean poeple (disproportionately women) simply opt out.

This can be significant in general ability to sort of join in with general life.

This stems from "man as default" (obviously).

Exactly, nothingontelly! The thinking seems to be that we are aberrant or unusual because we need the facilities that we do, when in fact there are a lot of us and our needs are broadly the same and not unknown.

I went to the loo at Euston station recently. There was a massive group of men going to some event and they all went to the loo at the same time. Consequently, when I emerged there was a big queue for the men’s. I have never heard so much grumbling, whining, effing and blinding because they had to queue. It was really funny - women were coming out of the ladies and openly laughing at the grumpy men.

I have enormous beef with there not being enough women’s toilets everywhere. I have particular problems with family places - NT properties, shops, softplay - where it is often women with one, two or more kids who end up queuing.

At the Harry Potter studio there are LOADS of women’s toilets. I like to think JK Rowling had a hand in that herself.

Compounding the not enough toilets is that it’s more often women taking the children (of both sexes) to the ladie’s.

I get particularly cross in motorway service stations for some reason. The dads breezing in and out of the loos while the mums all have toddlers hanging off them.

Ive told this story before

On top of the walkie talkie building in the sky garden

One corridor full of fully equipped cubicles

Long queue of women

Ive been there twice and have seen 3 men attempt to walk to the front of the queue

They just assumed

It was very funny, they were obviously a bit embarrassed and apologetic

There is the opposite as well, of the female behaviour (which we do for many reasons) ie queueing quietly

If there aren't enough places for men to pee, rather than wait in a long queue, some of them will decide to pee in places no-one wants them to pee instead. So men have enough facilties partly because if they don't,a large enough minority will nip off and do it outside / on teh street / round the back / if more drunken venues then in the sink etc etc

So there's that as well.

Another example of the poor behaviour of a few men, benefitting all.

plus of course up until recently, and still primarily, men commission and design our public buildings, and for a fair few sorts were the primary users until recently. Thinking about facilities in universities when women were finally allowed in (there were hardly any apparently, I read about one of the posher ones in an article recently).

Side note: went to a show on broadway and there was a member of staff whose job it was to direct women into empty cubicles during the interval. None of this “oh, is this one vacant?” hesitance. It was an absolute revelation to have the toilets being used efficiently at full capacity. The turnover of women in/out and the speed the queue went down was astonishing. Also highlights that cubicle usage is necessarily slower than urinals because of privacy concerns aside from everything else.

Dry

Thats good... ive been second or third woman in a queue before...you kind of assume that the one in front has tried the door

The only show/theatre where I haven’t been able to go to the toilet during the interval was the Apollo watching Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. I was almost late back.

Interestingly they have a gender neutral toilet but no one used it. I was tempted I have to say.

The Manchester Arena is THE best place I've been for sufficient toilets.

The women toilet goes behind the men's in a u shape, thus having twice as many cubicles and taking up considerably more space.

I've not seen queuing since it was done. For either men or women I note.

One of the other problems I note, is families with young children. It's always the mother that takes the kids to the toilet even if the kids are boys. DH has been told that he takes DH on principle now, simply because it makes more sense and saves everyone time.

Takes DS...

DryHeave
Side note: went to a show on broadway and there was a member of staff whose job it was to direct women into empty cubicles during the interval. None of this “oh, is this one vacant?” hesitance. It was an absolute revelation to have the toilets being used efficiently at full capacity. The turnover of women in/out and the speed the queue went down was astonishing. Also highlights that cubicle usage is necessarily slower than urinals because of privacy concerns aside from everything else.
I have noticed a lot of new toilets being designed so that you can't tell from the queue if they are occupied or not. It is obvious to me that the doors should fall OPEN when they are unoccupied, so why do the architects not realise this?
Also, the average amount of time in the cubicle is LONGER than the average amount of time at the sink, which is SHORTER than the average time under the (so-called) 10 second dryers.
So why are there usually more sinks than toilets and only two dryers for every 10 sinks???

I’m certainly pleased that my dc (boys) can now go with dad or together. Will still take youngest with me if it’s just us though.

Am not surprised unfortunately at all, but the question is what can be done about it? Write to individual venues with suggestions such as having 3 x ladies and 1x male or 2 x female, 1x male and 1x unisex?

"have noticed a lot of new toilets being designed so that you can't tell from the queue if they are occupied or not"

Good spot! As soon as I read that I thought yes that's true, I hadn't consciously noticed that, but have had a vague awareness that things were different somehow and not in a good way!

I’m certainly pleased that my dc (boys) can now go with dad or together

Couldn’t they always go with dad?

I’m a frequent theatregoer and I can tell you the problem isn’t because women aren’t spotting that cubicles are vacant no matter what happened on Broadway once. I’m sure it happens but there are also many elderly patrons who take a little longer. I have also been in that godforsaken queue at the Donmar when a young woman has come out of the loo clutching her phone 🤔 at least it’s a small theatre.
I have heard academic studies before saying it’s indirect sexism and I doubt planning has much at all to do with it - it’s a question of legislation and profits. Until there is a law requiring a certain ratio of toilets to patrons of either sex/ gender what have you, there is no profit in providing a proper ratio. While theatres are full without providing a proper ratio, then the promoters and theatre management don’t need to worry about it, and we have to go on suffering. Also the Barbican was built in the 60s and has one of the worst & longest queues for the loo I can think of, Although there are a lot of them.

You are right Ridley but in the nappy years there often was no facilities in the Gents and so the habit was set for future years.
When it was just me and the boys, I didn’t feel happy sending them into Gents on their own until about age 9 or 10.

The worst toilets i’ve been to recently were in the velodrome at the Olympic Park. They were so badly designed with nowhere to queue so every time someone came in the whole queue had to kind of rearrange itself. And there was one hand dryer but four cubicles so lots of women waiting with dripping hands. It annoyed me so much because it’s a new-ish venue.