entertainment

Finally a solution that will stop women queuing for the toilet at a public event.

It’s almost intermission at the fabulous theatre show you’re enjoying and immediately your mind begins to try and calculate how best to get to the toilet first, avoid the queue and maybe even have time to grab a snack.

It’s just unacceptable, isn’t it? That in this day and age the architects of the world haven’t yet figured out that women need more toilets cubicles than men.

There’s a reason that at every show, every big sporting event, every cinema and at every workplace the men’s toilets are almost always vacant and yet the women’s toilets have a line of cross legged women outside of them. It’s simple biology. Men can use the urinal. They only need a cubicle with an actual toilet occasionally.

Women need a cubical with an actual toilet every, single time. We’re not banking up the toilets because we’re fixing our make up or having a chat (well just sometimes).

Now the arts is trying to solve this undignified problem for good. See how the arts like to tackle the big social problems? Soon there won't be any more lines of women dressed in their finest making awkward conversation about "the inadequacy of toilets in theatres" or women pretending that "all I want is to powder my nose" because they don't wee like the rest of us.

A campaign has been launched in the UK which aims to "improve the state of Britain's lavatories". The Theatres Trust is donating money to help "enhance" the theatre experience for women by providing an adequate number of toilets.

It's simply revolutionary: an adequate number of toilets for women.

Keen theatre goers Susan and Simon Ruddick have donated $212,000 AUD to the trust which will be shared among 10 theatres in the UK in order to provide more loos for ladies.

Rebecca Morland, interim director of the Trust, told the UK Telegraph, “We spend an awful lot of time talking to theatres about what would make them better, and this is always an area that comes up."

“Managers are always very aware of where the queues are and where the complaints come from. Without wanting to put too fine a point on it, we take longer than gentlemen do. If you have a 50-50 split in the audience, you need more space for ladies’ loos. It’s about helping people to enjoy their trip to the theatre more. If you spend half your time in a queue, you’re not going to be able to spend time in the bar or talking to your friends.”

Now if only the issue of women's toilets could go global, because it is a global problem. More women would attend sporting events if there were adequate ladies' toilets. We'd be healthier, happier and more than willing to spend that time buying food and merchandise.

Workplaces would benefit. Forget coffee breaks, I'm sure that if you completed a monetary assessment of the time women waste waiting for the toilet it would probably account for millions if not billions of dollars in lost productivity.

Could the problems of the world be solved as simply as doubling or tripling the number of ladies loos? You never know.

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Top Comments

Laura Palmer 8 years ago

About bloody time!


Karen Cass 8 years ago

Is this a British problem? All my local (country town) venues/malls have 3-4 times more pee-places in thar ladies than the gents.

Hobgoblin 8 years ago

Not a British problem. I don't think I've ever been anywhere that has more ladies toilets than mens. I mean, I've never really been in the mens toilets, so I'm basing this on apparent size as well as the queues...