Potty Parity Promoting Gender Equality in Concert Halls

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my name is joji hattori i’m a violinist

a musical conductor but also

the owner of this restaurant in vienna

you just heard a piece called marsh

miniature

viennoise by the viennese composer fritz

chrysler

and on the piano you have the wonderful

sasquia giorgini thank you very much

and now i’m going to take you to the

ladies room of my restaurant

because today i’m going to talk about

potty parody potty parity is a movement

which is trying to equalize the waiting

time for men and women

when using public toilets and why on

earth

would i want to talk about it today

there are actually three reasons

first of all throughout my entire life

as a performing musician

i’ve been listening to the constant

complaints of my

female fans about the longest cues

in front of their toilets during the

intermission of my concerts

secondly i’m japanese by origin

and generally for japanese people

toilets are very important

that is why they even produce luxury

toilets for private households

these things apparently can wash most

parts of your

body automatically flush by itself warm

your butt

and even over sound any

noises with beautiful music by mozart

and the third reason why i want to talk

about this today is because i am an

idealist

idealists fight for a just cause without

any self-interest

and that is in fact the exact opposite

of lobbyism

when people are fighting only for their

own interests

let me give you some historical

background on this theme

here you can see the floor plan of one

of the very first

grand scale public toilets in europe

when you look at the distribution

between men and women

you can see about 80 percent

being assigned to men and i’m sure this

was

designed by a man well today

things have improved slightly but it is

most surprising to me

that in our age of political correctness

there are still so many buildings all

over the world which disadvantage

women because not enough flow space has

been assigned

to them let me mention one positive

example from the united states

when in 1989 the very first restroom

equity bill was passed in california

it was initiated by then senator arthur

torres

a wonderful man after his wife was stuck

at the theater in front of the ladies

room for

apparently over half an hour but

even this bill from over 30 years ago

has not led to many changes

as regard to building regulations now

let’s get to the bottom of this problem

what do we need to change to improve the

lives of women

to get rid of the terribly long queues

in front of their toilets

now here we can see a design with an

equal amount of space assigned to men

and women

but is that what we need would

an equal amount of space assigned to

both genders

serve the public toilet needs of women

well if i may use an analogy

this could potentially be as unjust as

giving the same size

dog house to a little chihuahua and a

big

saint barnard in other words i have to

say absolutely no to 50

50 as regard to floor space because

women just need and use

public toilets more often than men my

conclusion

after many years of deep research is

that at public performance venues

the correct ratio needs to be four

to one or eighty percent to twenty

percent in favor of women

now let me explain to you how i got to

this result

even if we assume that 50 of toilet

users are men and 50

women we would need to assign more floor

space

for women because a cubicle needs much

more space than the neurano

for this discussion i’ve actually

invented an expression

called bladder emptying device or

in short bed a bed can either be

an urinal or a cubicle to be fair to

architects

i must admit that most of them nowadays

have thought of assigning

the same number of bds to men and women

like in this example this is a very

typical floor plan

when they have assigned equal numbers of

beds

that’s why the ladies room occupies a

little bit more floor space

but so far almost all architects and

regulators

in the entire human history have failed

to consider

all the many reasons why women

attend public toilets much more often

than men

and stay much longer once they are there

now i will introduce

a new unit for this subject called

public toilet usage minutes or in short

ptums in order to determine

precisely how much floor space one needs

to assign to

women’s toilets we need to calculate how

many pitons

women need in comparison to men first

let’s look at category one

how often do men or women attend public

toilets

1a bladder size

the average woman and i’ve said average

has a smaller bladder than the average

man that means

they need to go to the toilet more often

and that means they need more

more peters 54

for women and 46 for men

then we look at 1b mentality difference

the average woman is a little bit more

cautious than the average man

that means even if they don’t have to

they’re more likely to attend the toilet

before the next long opera act starts

the difference here is not very big 52

for women versus 48 for men

and 1c visits for reasons other than

emptying the bladder

many female friends of mine have

explained to me

that in addition to visits related to

the female psycho

they often go to the toilet just to

refresh their makeup

or in order to accompany their

girlfriends

the difference of petums here is the

greatest

58 for women versus

42 for men now i will proceed

at looking at category two

how long do ladies or gentlemen stay at

public toilets

2a the most obvious difference

is the lack of urinals for women

well when they come to the toilet they

need to approach the cubicle

open the door get into the cubicle close

the door behind them

and lock the door put their hand back

down

some ladies disinfect the seats

then they need to get undressed sit down

after they’re finished

use toilet paper get dressed again

oh grab the handbag don’t forget that

unlock the door open the door exit

the cubicle and close the door

behind them this all takes so much more

time

than men going to the rhino category 2

b this is about the flow speed of urine

well in my entire research i have tried

to be really objective

and that included that i didn’t neglect

the potentially

one reason which might increase the

duration of men’s visits

of course they shouldn’t change your

overall statistics very much

but allegedly some older men have a much

slower flow speed than women then we

have 2c

and 2d extra time for

refreshing the makeup as we discussed

before

and then for the chats well in order to

determine the exact ratio of pitums

about the duration of the stay i once

spent an evening

with my friends male and female

this was a very fun evening because it

became a statistical battle between

the men overestimating the woman’s

chatting times and the women

overestimating the

slowness of the of the flow speed

but in any case we all could agree

that women stay at least 50 percent

longer

per visit than men making the pitum

ratio

60 for women to 40 percent for men

now to the math here you can see all the

detailed calculations

i did please trust me that

i have done all my maths very

conscientiously

by applying the so-called multiplication

rule

of the science of statistics the

staggering result is that

women need 72.47

of the public toilet usage minutes in

comparison to men

just needing 27.53

but remember i said at the beginning

that

cubicles occupy more floor space

please now fasten your seat belts

because

now you’re going to see a floor plan

with the ideal distribution

yes toilets in public buildings such as

concert halls

where visits are concentrated on certain

time frames

you should assign 80 percent of the

floor space to women

and just 20 to men

on this plan there are 26 beds for women

of course all cubicles and 10 beds for

men

six urinals and four cubicles

i truly hope that this presentation will

become one day

obligatory viewing for all architectural

students

and public officers in charge of

building regulations inspiring them to

change

the way they design public toilets in

future

and what do i get out of this not being

a woman

of course as idealists are supposed to

get nothing

but i must admit that i’m very much

looking forward

to the second half of my future concerts

when after the intermission all my

female audience will be back in their

seats

thank you

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