The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings Wednesday on the “Potty Parity Act,” a bill that seeks to address the unequal number of restroom facilities for women in federal buildings by requiring at least a 1-to-1 ratio for toilets, including urinals, in women’s and men’s restrooms.

Supporters of the bill say women forced to wait in long restroom lines are at risk of health issues, including abdominal pain, cystitis and other urinary tract infections.

Found by Aric Mackey.




  1. jbenson2 says:

    The key lines are:

    “In 2010, we must move the clock forward by finally addressing an overdue problem of unequal…”

    and

    “manifestations of more deeply rooted problems of discrimination, among race, physical ability and gender”

    Yeah! Right-on! Do it!

    I am so glad to see Congress is concentrating on the important issues.

    * The continuing 10% unemployment problem? – just put it on the back burner so Congress can focus on truly critical matters

    * Foreign policy, Iran, N. Korea, China? – nah, that’s under control

    * 20+ million illegal aliens and open borders? – piece of cake, just give them amnesty

    * The massive debt problem and terrorism? – give me a break, they’re just petty issues

  2. genericreg says:

    I’m at a risk for the health problems that come along with not having a lounge in the bathroom. Leg pain, back pain, and stress-related diseases, including heart disease. They should have to put a lounge in every men’s bathroom.

  3. chris says:

    If the title 9 sports reform are any guide it just means they will remove a bunch of urinals and leave the number of stalls unchanged.

    Fine by me, I’ll just go pee on that wall over there 🙂

  4. aslightlycrankygeek says:

    “at least a 1-to-1 ratio for toilets”

    What?? Isn’t the supposed problem that the ratio is higher than 1-to-1 now in favor of men? Is it saying that if men don’t have an equal number of toilets, that is fine as long as it is the women who have more?

    Wouldn’t you expect to have more men in federal buildings anyway? This reminds me of my engineering building in college. There was one like a full restroom for every woman in the building, since the men to woman ratio was about 20:1

    It is one thing that your job is useless, but when you get to the point where you are not doing anything worthwhile but are actually wasting people’s time and money with bills like this, you should really be ashamed of yourself. I guess some people really wish they lived in the early 20th century and could get credit with tackling woman’s equality and civil liberty issues. They either don’t realize those problems have already been solved or are not smart or courageous enough to tackle the problems that actually effect people in 2010.

  5. Phydeau says:

    #1 Uh, there’s enough of them that they can work on more than one problem at a time.

    This has been acknowledged as a problem for a long time. Sports stadiums are on the cutting edge of this. They pass a law, make it happen, done, back to the big issues.

  6. Cursor_ says:

    Well if the US wasn’t so uptight about sex I would just make the bathrooms all co-ed like you see in most clubs.

    Hell it already is when the opposite gender parent takes their kid to the rest room. I’m surprised that some over-zealous nutball has not already demanded something be done about that.

    Cursor_

  7. jescott418 says:

    If you fire a few more people you would not have this problem and your ratio’s would be better and you could save the tax payer hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh wait! You don’t know how to save money.

  8. RSweeney says:

    There is literally NO problem so small as to be beyond the requirement for federal mandate.

    This is the big government mindset.

  9. Benjamin says:

    When I was in the Navy, the technical training command I was in opened up to women. There were two men’s rooms on each floor, but no woman’s rooms. They just pried the sign off of one of the men’s rooms on each floor and made them women’s rooms. They now had the required “1-to-1 ratio for toilets, including urinals, in women’s and men’s restrooms.” Granted that the urinals were useless to the women, but at least they had an equal amount of fixtures.

    Most woman’s rooms have the same layout as men’s rooms, except the men’s rooms have a row of urinals. Putting in an extra row of toilets would require moving walls and such, so instead the cheaper way would be to add in a row of urinals in the woman’s room. This solves the problem without actually solving the problem, which is good enough for government work.

  10. Benjamin says:

    #6 “Hell it already is when the opposite gender parent takes their kid to the rest room. I’m surprised that some over-zealous nutball has not already demanded something be done about that.”

    That is why they have family restrooms in newer malls.

  11. ubiquitous talking head says:

    The toilet count is only the smaller half of the problem:

    the big half is that women TAKE TWICE AS FUCKING LONG TO PISS.

    The hardcore “potty parity” fanatics want TWICE as many toilets in the women’s facilities as there are in the men’s for this reason.

  12. Faxon says:

    Piss on ’em.

  13. MrMiGu says:

    “I’m at a risk for the health problems that come along with not having a lounge in the bathroom. Leg pain, back pain, and stress-related diseases, including heart disease. They should have to put a lounge in every men’s bathroom.”

    would you really want to touch furniture that lived in a mens room?

  14. BigBoyBC says:

    It’s not just that women take longer to use the can, it’s also that darn “herd” mentality of women when they go. Ever hear a guy turn to his buddy and ask him to go with him to the bathroom?

    Let us also not forget touching up the make-up and hair and also the 10-minutes of gossip…

  15. Cap'nKangaroo says:

    How would they count that long trough urinal I remember from our county fairgrounds restroom? It could accommodate up to 20 men as long as they were not too shy.

  16. bobbo, our economy is Mainstreet, Wallstreet is Organized Crime says:

    Give women the same number of toilets, but the same amount of toilet paper too.

    Ha, ha!

    I wonder how many women carry TP with them?

    We’re all gonna die in our sh*t one day.

  17. Arch-Joe says:

    Just to add some insight; from someone who does this for a living, the current International Building Code already required a minimum equal number of toilets for both men and women in “Business Occupancies”. It also required an equal number or more for women in all other occupancy classifications. I haven’t met an owner yet that wants to exceed minimum number of public toilets in any building.

    Also, The International Plumbing code says that for mens restrooms you can substitute a urinal for a toilet in a specific ratio. For example in the last office building I worked on 5 toilets each were required for both men and women for a total of 10 per floor. The Womens restroom had 5 tiolets, while the mens had 3 cans and 2 urinals.

    Sounds like these congressmen simply want to update every existing restroom in a federal facility to meet or exceed the current standard. Doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me, though they might get more than they bargained for when some older building require complete renovations to meet this new “standard.”

  18. Maricopa says:

    Make ’em all unisex. We could use a better class of graffiti.

    But, I’m with #14 MrMiGu about using the “lounge” furniture.

  19. Sea Lawyer says:

    Shovel-ready jobs.

  20. MikeN says:

    Actually, feminists insist the lines have to be the same, requiring more women’s bathrooms than men.

  21. Richard says:

    I say get rid of all the bathrooms. Suggest that the workers get “depends.” Get back to work slaves!

  22. eggman9713 says:

    I think the International Building Code has had provisions like this for many years. To my knowledge, you basically have to assume the ratio of occupants in a building is 50% male/50% female and provide equal facilities for each with only limited exception. This problem seems to be limited to older buildings where regulations like this did not exist.

    On a side note its a bit of a problem in our office because we have about 50 male employees and 15 female employees, and the womens restroom has 3 toilets and the mens room has two toilets and a urinal. You can imagine how often we get lines in the mens room.

  23. Glenn E. says:

    I have my doubts that this will actually reduce “waiting lines” that much. Whenever I go to the grocery store, there is often two or more women, blocking an isle, gabbing away about anything. So I wonder if this isn’t happening in Lady’s rooms too? I rarely see men, who don’t know each other, gabbing away in any public areas. Especially in rest rooms. If what I think is happening, is happening. Then women in general have got to be more considerate of those waiting to get in and do some useful business. And not be hanging out, shooting the breeze, away from men hitting on them, and monopolizing the rest room space.

  24. Rick Cain says:

    Men are 50% of the population, women are 50% of the population. Seems logical to have the same number of stalls for both.


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