Are unisex changing rooms and toilets really common across Europe?

[saynotofondant]

Often when there is a new ruling or clarification about single-sex spaces in the UK, I read comments (not here) like “Unisex changing rooms are normal in Europe, it’s just Brits being prudish”.

I lived in Central Europe for a long, long time - Germany mainly - and to be honest I never came across unisex changing rooms or toilets.

What are your experiences? Have you been to many (or any?) places in Europe where unisex changing rooms and toilets are the norm?

Germany does have a very progressive law on self-ID* (including for prisoners) but in daily life, changing rooms and toilets in my experience were always sex-segregated. I did once witness an argument in the ladies’ communal showers after swimming as a woman had brought all her children into the showers with her and one of them was a boy of about 12. (It’s considered hygienic to shower naked after swimming so the women were especially sensitive to overage males).

Sometimes there were slightly ridiculous situations - “textile free” evenings at the local swimming pool where those partaking changed separately and then met naked on the poolside, or stripping off separately and then getting into the same sauna… And of course the lakes often had a naked bank, where everyone stripped off together. But places were designed with separate changing rooms, and there were often allocated “ladies’ days”, “men’s days” and “mixed days” at saunas or naked sections of thermal baths. So people could choose to be naked in front of the other sex or not.

*I guess that means that nowadays men can go into women’s places if they identify as such, and vice versa. But only if they say the magic words.

I have only ever seen one mixed sex toilet when in Europe and that was in a ski resort in France. It was absolutely awful. I couldn’t let DD go on her own like I could in other restaurants. There were several men peeing with the door open, one with his backside hanging out. The toilets were covered in piss so had to wipe it before lifting DD into it. Absolutely disgusting.

I haven’t seen mixed sec facilities anywhere I’ve travelled in Europe. Apart from places where there’s a single loo, of course.

Even if they were totally the norm, though, they never have been here. And I don’t want them.

I've experienced two mixed sex toilets. One in Berlin and one in Copenhagen.
Berlin: large room with two cubicles - the type that you usually find in single sex facilities with partition walls and gaps above/below the door - urinals and basins in the main area.
Copenhagen: separate cubicles with solid walls and floor to ceiling doors, communal hand washing facilities.

Both in art galleries, both absolutely stank and made me very uncomfortable. Berlin was the worst I genuinely felt very vulnerable as a man came in to use the urinal while I was in the cubicle and I had to walk past him to wash my hands.

I've not been to Berlin, but the impression i've always had is of louche seediness...with its history of libertinism during the Weimar Republic ( one of the many dark under-bellies of Nazism), and now its reputation as a major 'queer' centre - with sex clubs, prostitution etc

In the central library in Helsinki the toilets are mixed sex, the set up is: a huge room with washbasins in the middle, individual cubicles with a floor to ceiling frosted glass door, you can’t see into the cubicles but you can see a vague outline so it will be apparent if someone is collapsed on the floor, there’s also a small washbasin in each cubicle.

I was in a shopping centre in Norway where the toilets were unisex, but had clearly previously been men’s and women’s (not floor to ceiling).

I realised that people knew which had been the men’s and which had been the women’s, and aligned to that, separating themselves regardless of the new signage.

very mixed in the netherlands
the temporary seasonal stalls on beaches tend to be mixed sex.
many premises have male and female separate but it's not uncommon to have a row of mixed sex stalls with communal handwashing.

Sounds a very discomforting experience.

When you say mixed sex...do you mean lots of individual cubicles?

I've read reports of voyeurism and pervey behaviour in around mixed sex changing cubicles on Barcelona's beaches. Elsewhere in Barcelona I've not come across mixed sex toilets anywhere. Of course small establishments tend to have a couple of single occupancy rooms - but in most places even these are marked as being for 'Male' and for 'Female'.

Hamburgs recently upgraded state of the art Alster Swimming Center has mixed sex changing rooms. There are cubicles, but some users, both male and female, change in the public areas - bits on display for all to see. Quite shocking at times as school swim groups also walk through the public areas to access their changing rooms. But when I have mentioned this to German friends they think I am a hung up American.

Showers are single sex but without any partitions and very open to the public area so people walking past can see users in the areas nearest the corridors.

Gender recognition and self ID rules are very pro trans in Germany. But they do also offer gender neutral facilities in most facilities - though not at the Alster Swim Center.

usually cubicles or stalls.

the ones at beaches can be very airy, gaps almost knee high at the bottom and also a large gap at the top above head height.

You beat me to it. I was going to mention the Oodi set-up. The cubicles are so brightly lit you provide a shadow show through the frosted glass to people in the communal handwashing area. There’s far less privacy for users (mainly women) who need to rearrange clothing to use the toilet. Jumpsuit fans beware!

In Catalunya , Northern Spain, mixed changing village, inadequate doors o cubicles. No signage on showers or toilets, inevitably leading to people going into the wrong ones. Not safe for women or children. Men and boys towered over the cubicle doors. Horrible experience.
where I live swimming pool changing rooms strictly segregated, with cubicles and open changing areas, plus changing areas including cubicles for men plus children or women plus children. Showers separate. Sometimes disabled men come in with their mothers or carers, who should at least use the cubicles. And the single sex area often used by older children of both sexes despite there being a perfectly good section for them. But generally safe for women and girls.

In Italy in campings sand swimming pools I've always found segregated facilities. I can't exclude that mixed sex might have been built more recently, but it's not the norm.

I live in France and teach at a business school. The building was recently renovated and 2 sets of unisex toilets installed (both had cubicles and urinals.)
Within a week, there were so many complaints that they had to change them to male and female ones. (So 2 useless urinals in what are now the
“women’s only” ones!
Both male and female students were very uncomfortable with the unisex set up.

The school director told us it was a legal requirement to have unisex toilets. Not sure if that is true but to be fair, I suspect they may have been less controversial had they just had cubicles and not urinals. I personally don’t really care about the unisex idea but found it pretty grim for the female students to have to walk past a row of male students peeing in urinals to get to the cubicles and the boys were equally unhappy with the set up!

Lived & worked in Paris for 3 years, frequently travelled in France from age 14 to age 60.

I’ve seen ONE public loo, by a train station, which was either mixed or used the same entrance for men & women.

That was in 1975 (I did not enter).

Anecdotally Ive been told by Frenchwomen & by Brits living in France they hated them & were at risk there, & that they’ve been phased out.

The problem with this set up is men like to spend a look of time in the sinks looking at women in cubicles or they pleasure themselves in the cubicles knowing women are outside.
Glass toilet doors that go frosted when you close were given awards in Japan. Then men realised they could frighten lone women by not closing the door properly.

In the UK of course, the mixed sex, private toilet cubicles with a bank of mixed sex sinks outside the toilets in an open communal area is found in many schools, which is why my research was focused on them.

India is leading the way academically studying unisex toilets in schools. India has now instructed schools toilets have to be single sex.
Here’s a study linking unisex school toilets to rapes of girl pupils:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014292125000030

I’m in Finland at the moment and there are some mixed sex toilets, I have used one today at the Modern Art Museum. All very clean with full cubicles with basins in them. I have no problems with this. The same situation at the Vasa museum in Stockholm.

I don’t recall seeing any unisex toilets in Greece. I didn’t use any changing rooms, so I don’t know about those.

France in the 80s had quite a lot of mixed sex toilets - I hated it. There would be a urinal then a cubicle so you had to walk past pissing men to get to a loo.

“Jumpsuit fans beware” raised an actual snort. Obviously not a laughing matter really, but you have a way with words!

Thank you to everyone who has responded. So “unisex communal facilities” do exist here and there in Europe, but are vastly more common in London’s West End…!

I was surprised that Sweden was more sex-segregated than I’d expected. And that parts of Spain felt unsafe and badly designed. The only country that didn’t surprise me was the Netherlands 😄

It’s interesting as The Good Law Project say unisex toilet rooms are the ‘sophisticated’ solution for KCSIE in schools yet Jolyon gets upset at people having to go to ‘the basement’ (?!) to use the ‘disabled’ (accessible) one. The accessible toilet room is a unisex toilet room, with the addition of other essential modifications for non-ambulant people’s needs. It’s not as though the majority of current accessible toilet rooms all meet the correct standards anyway. Accessible toilets are definitely not just ‘in the basement’. They will usually be in an easily accessible place, because of accessibility.

Jolyon also has the problem when pushing unisex toilets that that’s not some men want. Robin Moira White called ‘gender-neutral’ toilets ‘ghettos’. But the problem is, there’s no getting away from the fact that if you have a mixed sex environment, and want to stay within building regs and legislation, the toilet has to be in a room of its own, not a cubicle. I believe it needs to have a sink in it too and the courts seem to agree. Certainly in England’s Approved Document T it does. Therefore the only way to toilets inclusive of all genders is to have unisex toilets called ‘universal’ designs and everyone be in ‘ghettos’.

That means all the cubicles have to be turned into self contained private rooms, costing businesses millions. Logistically universal toilets should be leading straight out to a circulation space like a corridor. There’s lots of different requirements that are costly in terms of space and facilities. Of course, these completely private rooms are less safe for women and children and also don’t meet the needs of people with ambulant disabilities that mean they may collapse. That’s not reasonable.

I wonder if all the MPs chuntering about toilets are thinking of the health, safety and economic practicalities of making all toilets mixed sex?

The Building Safety Regulator (when it was part of the Health and Safety Executive so that’s HSE as well) says only single sex toilets within a single sex environment are allowed door gaps. So if anyone is using toilet cubicles with door gaps in a mixed sex environment, they can refer to the design not conforming to standards compliant with the Building Safety Regulator.

OP look up why a lot of public toilets have closed in the West End. Then ask why on earth people thought that private, mixed sex toilet designs were a good idea.

The toilets in the Ann Frank museum in Amsterdam are mixed sex.
I don’t recall seeing any other ones in any of my many trips abroad other than a hole in the ground toilet in a rest stop up a mountain, many years ago when I was travelling to a ski resort. I was desperate for a wee yet my body would not let me, knowing there was a queue of people waiting and having to wee over a hole!

To answer the question, in Europe the time I have been in unisex toilets was in train carriages and once on a bus. Of course plane toilets too. I know they had the stand alone superloo style toilets in Paris in the streets but never used one.

I really can’t remember any others. Small cafes with one toilet will all be unisex.

My most memorable train carriage toilet was through SE Asia when I was squatting, aiming for the hole where I could watch the train tracks pass by underneath, and hoping we weren’t coming up to a station. Slightly paranoid about my foot slipping on the wet wood and falling onto the tracks too! 0/10 for safety!