MCLC: occupy men's toilets

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: occupy men's toilets
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Source: NYT 
(2/29/12):http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/world/asia/chinese-women-demand
-more-public-toilets.html

BEIJING JOURNAL
For Chinese Women, a Basic Need, and Few Places to Attend to It
By SHARON LaFRANIERE

BEIJING ‹ Wang Jianyi, 26, was in a huge hurry. She had been riding the
bus for three hours. At each rest stop, the line outside the women¹s
toilet was too long for her to use the restroom.

So as soon as she arrived at a major inter-city bus terminal in Beijing on
Monday morning, she made a beeline for the nearest public restroom. Only
to encounter yet another line.

³I have been holding my pee for an hour,² she said in frustration as she
waited for a women¹s stall while a few feet away, men sauntered in and out
without delay. ³I think there should definitely be more stalls for women,
because women take longer.²

At least twice as long, studies suggest. Despite that, national standards
for public street toilets in urban China recommend a one-to-one ratio of
men¹s stalls, including urinals, to women¹s stalls. Since sanitation
workers ‹ almost uniformly women ‹ routinely take over at least one
women¹s stall for their cleaning supplies, women typically end up with
even less opportunity to relieve themselves.

It is not, some would argue, the most compelling public issue that
confronts China at the moment. But it is nonetheless one that Li Tingting,
22, a public management student in Shanxi Province, wants China to address.

And that has thrust her into the strange, unpredictable world of Chinese
citizen activists, who press for change within narrow, shadowy boundaries,
never knowing if government authorities will brook them or slap them down.

Ms. Li¹s tactics are rather avant-garde for China: A little more than a
week ago, in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, she and half a dozen
other activists commandeered the men¹s stalls at a busy public restroom
near a park. For three-minute intervals, they warded off the men and
invited the women to shorten their waits by using the vacated men¹s
stalls. Then they waved the men back in for 10 minutes.

The operation, dubbed ³Occupy Men¹s Toilets,² ended after an hour with,
according to Ms. Li, greater public awareness and no trouble. The local
government noted a few days later that since last March, the ratio of
men¹s stalls to women¹s in all new or renovated public restrooms in
Guangzhou had been set at 1:1.5. Xinhua, China¹s official news agency,
reported that the city responded promptly to the activists¹ demands.

But that is Guangzhou, long considered a comparatively liberal city. Here
in ultra-security-conscious Beijing, street antics are not taken so
lightly.

When Ms. Li and a few other activists tried to occupy the men¹s toilets on
Sunday morning at the public restroom in Beijing near the Deshengmen
long-distance bus terminal, they were greeted by 10 officers and three
police vehicles. The officers told Ms. Li that without a permit, she and
her fellow activists must leave, taking their colorful poster and pink
leaflets with them.

The little troupe headed to another restroom, only to be greeted by more
police officers, who videotaped Ms. Li as she talked to reporters about
why women need more toilets. Once the reporters departed, Ms. Li said, the
police forced her and a friend to spend the next five hours sitting in a
nearby restaurant, lest they dare try to occupy another bathroom.

Chinese officials want to appear to be benign authorities who are in touch
with the needs and wants of the grass roots, not overseers of police
squads who detain harmless university students seeking better bathrooms.
So that is how the English-language version of the state-run China Daily
presented Sunday¹s event.

³Toilet occupation group is flushed with success,² read Monday¹s
front-page headline. ³Women demanding more public facilities make their
voice heard.² No mention was made of the firm-handed police intervention.
The story made it appear as if all went off without a hitch.

Public restrooms are not a new topic for China, nor a particularly
delicate one. The World Health Organization estimates that tens of
millions of Chinese have no access to toilets and defecate in the open. A
2010 report estimated that 45 percent of Chinese lacked access to improved
sanitation facilities that protect users from contact with excrement,
contributing to the risk of disease.

But China¹s sanitation has improved drastically in the past 20 years and
continues to get better. Riding a historic property boom, Chinese are now
buying nearly 19 million toilets a year, about twice the number sold in
the United States, according to industry estimates. Last November, China
hosted the World Toilet Organization¹s 11th World Toilet Summit and Expo
on Hainan Island. The Chinese authorities there said that the island, a
tourist spot, was in the midst of a ³toilet revolution.²

Guo Jianmei, director of the Women¹s Legal Consultancy Center in Beijing,
said the street performances of Ms. Li and her friends had highlighted the
problem of potty parity, as it is sometimes known, and forced officials to
unearth oft-disregarded regulations. She said she hoped China¹s national
legislators, due to meet next week, took heed.

China¹s 1:1 ratio for men¹s to women¹s street toilets, spelled out in
national standards in 2005, is less favorable to women than either
Taiwan¹s or Hong Kong¹s. Taiwan recommends a 1:3 ratio for public toilets,
while Hong Kong recommends a ratio of 2:3. China adopts Hong Kong¹s ratio
only in certain public structures like shopping malls, presumably in
recognition of the fact that women are bigger shoppers.

Ms. Li sees gender-free toilets as a possible alternative for China, and
said she hoped to carry on her campaign because ³I do think the right to
go to the bathroom is a basic right.²

But after spending all Sunday afternoon confined to a restaurant, she
said, she will probably avoid Beijing.

Mia Li contributed research.