It’s good you are looking at numbers. The numbers of people disadvantaged by toilets not being single sex are in the millions.
Public toilet design takes into consideration safety and health. The gaps you see underneath and above doors and partitions of toilets are there for many reasons - but fundamentally can save lives because it immediately tells others the occupant is in danger. From the data I have it prevents assaults as the woman/boy/girl is not in a sound resistant private cubicle.
What happens to these gaps if the space becomes ambiguous as to whether it’s single sex or not? They get closed up. Even in single sex design. I have researched this in great detail why the needs of medically vulnerable people were ignored in design consultations. I saved a young woman’s life by noticing she was not breathing and on the floor of her cubicle.
Hundreds of people collapse behind closed doors each year. The company who advised the government on toilet design for those with long term health conditions for Document T did not look at most long term health conditions including crucially heart conditions. 11% of people having a cardiac arrest are in a toilet room but they didn’t acknowledge that. There was also no mention of diabetes or epilepsy. Together, all the conditions affect millions in this country.
There’s been a huge investment in defibrillators in the community but you need to know the person has collapsed. It is not uncommon to find people dead in public toilets.
Do you know why the Stonewall gold-award company who advised the government recommended an enclosed design for people with long term health conditions? Because transactivists in New York nightclubs preferred them. That was their evidence source which was from two American transactivist toilet designers Susan Stryker and Joel Sanders.
We have a situations where there are rapes in places you would think were safe. The last full figures that are published are over 1 per school day in schools (the BBC researchers said this was an underestimate) and over 1 per day in hospitals (this is an approximate rounded up figure as the Daily Mirror’s FOIs to the police were incomplete).
So where do you think these rapes are taking place? In view of people? It seems not as very, very few perpetrators ever get charged.
In reality what happens is that there are more preventable deaths and more locations for undetected assaults. In terms of assaults, it affects children and women more. In terms of deaths it affects medically vulnerable (both mental and physical health) and drug users the most ie vulnerable people.
We are all safer going to toilets that have door gaps in them. It is even scientifically proven we are less likely to catch a disease.
These are the real life consequences of placing total privacy before health and safety. No mixed sex design has door gaps. Fewer single sex designs do now too because of men’s behaviour (voyeurism mixed with the inability to stop men coming into women’s toilets).
The Supreme Court decision was a massive step in the right direction to make toilets safer for everyone.