Sex Differences
Women spend more time in washrooms than men, for physiological and cultural reasons. The requirement to use a cubicle rather than a urinal means urination takes longer; twice as long on average in studies. Women also make more visits to washrooms. Urinary tract infections and incontinence are more common in women. Pregnancy, menstruation, breastfeeding, and diaper-changing increase usage. The elderly, who are disproportionately female, take longer and more frequent bathroom visits.
A variety of modified urinals and personal funnels has been invented to make it easier for women to urinate standing up. None has become widespread enough to affect policy formation on potty parity.
John F. Banzhaf III, a law professor at George Washington University, calls himself the "father of potty parity." Banzhaf argues that to ignore potty parity, that is, to have merely equal facilities for men and women, constitutes a form of sex discrimination against women. Several authors have identified potty parity as a potential rallying issue for feminism, since all women can identify with it.
Read more about this topic: Potty Parity
Famous quotes containing the word differences:
“The mother must teach her son how to respect and follow the rules. She must teach him how to compete successfully with the other boys. And she must teach him how to find a woman to take care of him and finish the job she began of training him how to live in a family. But no matter how good a job a woman does in teaching a boy how to be a man, he knows that she is not the real thing, and so he tends to exaggerate the differences between men and women that she embodies.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)