The Hindu Business Line : A bill to end bathroom bias

THEY have a law to go after Osama's money trail, another to send forces to Iraq, and umpteen others for all and sundry purposes. Now, they are hotly debating an urgent issue: toilets.

Restroom Equity Bill that has been introduced in the New York City Council is about having more restrooms set aside for women than men in most buildings. The bill reads: "The absence of sufficient women's bathrooms in public assembly... is one of the most blatant, demeaning and visible forms of gender discrimination in our society."

The solution lies in `potty parity', and you can look up Wordspy for the definition: Noun, pronounced, PAW.tee pair.uh.tee; "the state or condition of having an equal or appropriate number of restrooms for each sex."

You may call it right to equa-loo-ty or whatever, but the dissent has been building for over a decade, when a lady was ticketed for using the men's facilities out of frustration over long lines for the ladies' room at a concert. Perhaps, there is a law to that effect too. Studies initiated after that event focused on time spent by the two genders in the restrooms, only to find that women take roughly twice as long as men.

One of the sponsors of what could become the new law on the subject is councilwoman Yvette Clarke. According to her, women take longer in the bathroom "because they often have small children to tend to, wear more clothes, and there's that anatomical difference." "We don't have the same type of equipment that men have," CNN cites Clarke as saying. A public interest law professor at George Washington University Law School, John F. Banzhaf III, is also in the news for championing the cause of women. The site, www.banzhaf.net, can inform one more about the professor and his reputation as the `father of potty parity,' apart from other appellations such as `entrepreneur of litigation,' `the fastest legal gun in the East,' `legal flame-thrower,' `the Osama bin Laden of torts' and so on. He had also "pushed litigation to get equal pricing for men and women for haircuts and dry cleaning." He writes: "Hopefully, women will be able to stand up for their rights, even if they can't always stand up while exercising those rights."

A report in New York Post notes how Chicago changed its plumbing code two years ago to require twice as many commodes for women as men in public buildings. "In a 60,000-seat outdoor arena, for example, Chicago's old plumbing code required 66 toilets for men, and 66 for women — 132 toilets in all. Now the code requires 410 toilets for women, and 205 for men."

There are dissents, however. Ellis Henican questions potty quotas in www.nynewsday.com. "Why should the men pay just because some women have decided to treat their public rest rooms like private clubhouses — handling delicate grooming matters, trading advice and admonitions, bonding with their buddies, endlessly complaining about the men in their lives."

OohLaLaw@hotmail.com

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A bill to end bathroom bias