Why Is There Always a Queue for the Ladies?

The surprisingly serious story behind one of life's most familiar queues.

Picture the scene.

You're at the theatre. The interval begins, and hundreds of people emerge into the foyer at exactly the same time.

Within minutes, a queue has formed outside the ladies' toilets.

It snakes along the corridor, around a corner and, if things are particularly desperate, begins to develop the slightly tense atmosphere of an airport departure gate after a cancelled flight.

Next door, meanwhile, the men's toilet appears to be operating with remarkable efficiency.

Men walk in.

Men walk out.

Occasionally, one looks at the queue next door with an expression somewhere between sympathy and relief.

It is such a familiar sight that we rarely question it.

Women simply take longer in the toilet, don't they?

Well, yes, sometimes.

But that isn't really the whole story.

The queue outside the ladies' loo is partly about anatomy and partly about how we use toilets. But it is also about architecture, history, caring responsibilities and a rather important question:

What does it actually mean to provide equal access to a toilet?

Because giving men and women the same amount of space does not necessarily mean giving them the same opportunity to use it.

And to understand why, we need to go back to Victorian Britain.

When public toilets were mostly for men

Public toilets as we recognise them are a relatively modern part of British life.

As Britain's towns and cities expanded during the nineteenth century, sanitation became an increasingly pressing public-health concern. Yet when public conveniences began appearing in Victorian cities, provision for women lagged considerably behind provision for men.

This wasn't simply an inconvenience.

It could restrict where women went.

The London Museum's history of women's public toilets describes how the shortage of facilities meant women often had to plan excursions around places where they knew a toilet would be available, such as the homes of friends and relatives.

In other words, something as ordinary as needing a wee could influence how freely someone could move around a city.

There was also a wider social context. Nineteenth-century women were increasingly present in shops, railway stations, exhibitions, workplaces and other public spaces, but much of the infrastructure around them had developed without their needs being given equal consideration.

The consequences extended beyond shopping or leisure.

According to the London Museum, inadequate toilet facilities were even used by some employers as an argument against employing women, a problem which persisted into the twentieth century.

So public toilets have never really been just about toilets.

They can affect who is able to work, travel and participate comfortably in public life.

The battle for the ladies' loo

The provision of women's public toilets could even become controversial.

In 1900, a proposal to construct a women's public lavatory in Camden Town became the subject of a remarkable local dispute.

Architectural historian Barbara Penner examined the episode in the Journal of Design History, drawing upon St Pancras Vestry records, contemporary newspapers and other evidence.

What might seem to us like an ordinary piece of municipal planning became entangled with much bigger Victorian questions about respectability, gender and women's place in public space.

Penner's research is a useful reminder that the design of something as mundane as a toilet is not necessarily socially neutral.

Where toilets are placed, how many are provided and who they are designed for can influence who feels able to use the spaces around them.

More than a century later, there are still echoes of that history in the queue outside the ladies.

Equal space doesn't necessarily mean equal toilets

Imagine designing two public toilets.

You give the men's toilet 20 square metres.

You give the women's toilet 20 square metres.

Perfectly equal.

Except there is a problem.

The women's toilet relies primarily on enclosed cubicles.

The men's toilet can contain cubicles and urinals.

Urinals generally occupy less space than individual enclosed cubicles and can allow several people to use the facilities at once. So two toilet areas with approximately the same floor space may have very different capacities.

Researchers have actually modelled this problem mathematically.

In a study published in Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Woonghee Tim Huh and colleagues used queueing theory and computer simulations to examine whether conventional toilet provision produces comparable waiting times for women and men.

Their analysis found that conventional standards did not necessarily achieve equal access.

It is an important distinction.

Equal space does not automatically mean equal waiting time.

Then there is the cubicle problem

Using a urinal can be remarkably quick.

Walk in. Use it. Wash your hands. Leave.

Using a toilet cubicle involves rather more choreography.

You enter the cubicle, close the door, lock it, arrange clothing, use the toilet, wipe, rearrange clothing, unlock the door and leave.

If you are menstruating, there may be a sanitary product to change and dispose of.

Pregnancy can bring more frequent urination and make manoeuvring in small spaces more difficult.

Someone with reduced mobility may need considerably more time.

And someone experiencing urinary urgency, incontinence, pelvic-floor problems or another health condition may have entirely different requirements again.

Each additional minute might seem insignificant.

But queues have an annoying mathematical habit of multiplying small differences.

One person taking slightly longer doesn't cause much trouble.

Hundreds of people arriving within the same ten-minute theatre interval certainly can.

This is why researchers studying the "potty parity" problem argue that waiting time itself is an important measure when thinking about equitable toilet provision.

Sometimes one woman isn't actually one toilet user

There is another detail easily overlooked when facilities are designed around simple headcounts.

Caring for Others.

Someone entering the ladies' toilets may have a small child with her.

She may be helping an older relative.

She may be accompanying someone who needs assistance.

She may need to use baby-changing facilities.

A cubicle therefore isn't always occupied by one independent adult making one quick visit to the loo.

Public toilets have to serve children, older people, disabled people and carers as well as the hypothetical able-bodied adult around whom buildings have so often been designed.

That makes capacity a much more complicated question than simply counting doors.

"Can't you just hold it?"

This is where an amusing observation about theatre intervals becomes something rather more important.

Waiting for a toilet is irritating for almost everyone.

For some people, however, access to a toilet can determine whether they feel able to go somewhere at all.

Someone standing in that queue might be pregnant.

Someone might have urinary urgency.

Someone might experience incontinence.

Someone might have a neurological condition affecting their bladder.

Someone might have a stoma.

Someone might be managing a bowel condition.

Someone might simply be absolutely desperate for a wee.

For these people, "just hold it" isn't a particularly useful solution.

And this takes us back to something the Victorians inadvertently demonstrated rather well.

If you cannot be confident that you will be able to find and use a toilet when you need one, your world can become smaller.

You may avoid long journeys.

You may think twice about shopping trips.

You may choose not to attend a concert.

You may check where the toilets are before leaving home.

You may always choose the aisle seat at the theatre.

You may plan your day around your bladder or bowel.

To everyone else, the public toilet is simply another door along the corridor.

To someone who urgently needs it, that door can determine whether they feel able to be there at all.

Enter "potty parity"

There is actually a name for the idea that toilet provision should take these differences into account.

And it is rather wonderfully called potty parity.

The basic principle is simple.

Instead of asking:

"Have we provided exactly the same amount of space?"

We could ask:

"Have we provided people with a genuinely comparable opportunity to use the toilet?"

Those are not necessarily the same thing.

Research into potty parity has examined waiting times rather than simply fixture numbers, recognising that equality on an architect's drawing does not necessarily translate into equality when several hundred people simultaneously decide they need a wee.

The issue is also reflected in modern building standards.

In England, toilet provision is governed through the Building Regulations and associated statutory guidance. Approved Document T from the Ministry of Housing provides current government guidance on the design and layout of toilet accommodation in new non-domestic buildings and certain changes of use.

The details of modern toilet design are considerably more complicated than simply dividing a room into "Ladies" and "Gents".

Designers now have to consider different types of toilet accommodation, accessibility, ambulant users, cubicle layouts and the practical requirements of the people who will actually use the building.

Which brings us back to that queue.

The humble loo isn't really so humble

Perhaps that is the strangest thing about toilets.

They seem trivial.

We joke about them. We avoid talking about them at the dinner table. We hide them behind euphemisms: the loo, the ladies, the gents, the bathroom, the powder room, the facilities.

But toilets sit at the intersection of public health, architecture, accessibility, gender, dignity and basic human biology.

Their history can tell us something about who our towns and cities were designed for.

Their design can influence who feels comfortable leaving home.

And their queues can reveal problems that are almost invisible until nature calls.

So, the next time you're at the theatre and see a queue winding its way out of the ladies' while people stroll effortlessly into the gents', perhaps the question shouldn't be:

"Why do women take so long?"

Perhaps it should be:

"Why did we build it this way?"

And, more importantly:

"Could we build it better?"

Oui, we can. 

Sources and further reading

Barbara Penner, "A World of Unmentionable Suffering: Women's Public Conveniences in Victorian London", Journal of Design History, 14:1 (2001), pp. 35–51. A detailed academic study of the controversy surrounding women's public toilets in Victorian London, based on contemporary evidence.

Woonghee Tim Huh, Jaywon Lee, Heesang Park and Kun Soo Park, "The Potty Parity Problem: Towards Gender Equality at Restrooms in Business Facilities", Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 68 (2019), 100666. Uses queueing theory and simulation to examine differences in toilet waiting times and how facilities might be designed more equitably.

London Museum, "Women's Toilets & the Fight for the Right to Work". An accessible introduction to the relationship between toilet provision, women's mobility and employment in nineteenth and twentieth-century London.

HM Government, Approved Document T: Toilet Accommodation. Current official guidance for England on the design and layout of toilet accommodation in relevant buildings.

At Oui, we believe talking about wee shouldn't be embarrassing. From the history of the humble loo to the latest urinary-health research, opening up the conversation helps us understand our bodies, challenge stigma and ask how things could be better.