I happen to work in a building from the early 1970s. It was designed to welcome two existing departments. It was fairly customised to match academics requirements. On my floor there was:
-one female toilet (with space for a potential second one, that was installed in 2001 or so);
-two male toilets and two urinals.
Recently, both sides have experienced a number of technical problems, which have reduced the infrastructure available. A colleague exasperated by the queues found out the legal minimum for these basic equipments. Here are the numbers:
-one toilet for 15 females;
-one toilet for 25 males and 1 urinal for 15 males.
A simple calculation therefore allows to conclude that, at the time of construction, the architect expected to have to provide bathrooms for
-less than 16 females (although more might turn up).
-between 44 and 50 males.
Now, let me elaborate on this. This week I am doing a training, which happens to take place in a building with lecture rooms essentially used by students in engineering. This building dates from a similar time. There are:
-3 toilets for females;
-about 8 toilets for males, and probably something like 4 or 6 urinals (I did not go and check!).
So if we apply to recommended numbers mentioned above, we get:
-less than 46 females;
-about 200 males.
Or in both cases, about 20% female.
How’s this for “built-in” discrimination?
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4 comments:
I wonder how that compares to the proportion of support staff, i.e. did they expect 20% of the workers to be secretaries?
Yes, I thought of that too; but that would not be the case in the second building, because it only has lecture rooms. Not *that* bad then? Hum.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
I went to a school where you had to go to another building to get to a women's restroom. Granted the two buildings were adjoined, but it was still a hassle.
A different building! That's taking it into a whole new dimension...
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