It’s 2025 and Lawmakers Are Still Fighting for Potty Parity

Speaking to representatives in states like Kentucky, New Mexico, and Tennessee, the Associated Press revealed that female politicians sometimes miss votes and debates due to a lack of facilities.

By Danielle Han | July 29, 2025 | 4:06pm

Photo: iStockphoto Politics

It’s 2025 and Lawmakers Are Still Fighting for Potty Parity

Of all the logical fallacies out there, there’s one toughy that really gets my goat. “Why do girls take so long in the bathroom?” I mean, I admit that biologically, menstruation is a damper on an otherwise in-and-out experience, and moms are more likely (than dads) to shoulder the responsibility of attending to their kids. But the more obvious answer to this ignorant adage is one often overlooked: it’s because the system was built like that.

A big part of the problem is the lack of foresight–and consequently, the lack of women’s toilets. Historically, many offices were built without the expectation that women one day would work as architects, engineers, or code officials. Today, we’re still dealing with the fact that the men who built old statehouses could not fathom that women would one day make laws.

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Across a number of legislatures, women are still fighting for potty parity–and a new report from the Associated Press reveals just how ingrained the issue is. Speaking to representatives from states such as Kentucky, New Mexico, and Tennessee, the publication revealed that a number of female politicians sometimes miss out on votes and debates due to a lack of facilities.

In statehouses like Kentucky’s, where there are only two bathrooms for 41 women (versus many more for men), choosing when to go requires careful strategy. As Kentucky Representative Lisa Willner put it: “You get the message very quickly: This place was not really built for us.”

The deficiency extends to other states, too. While men and women each get one restroom in Tennessee’s statehouse, the latter have but a cramped hall with just two stalls–compared to the former’s three urinals and three stalls. Speaking to AP, Aftyn Behn, a Democratic representative, noted she hadn’t been aware of the disparity until it was brought to her attention: “I’ve apparently accepted that waiting in line for a two-stall closet under the Senate balcony is just part of the job,” she told the AP. “I had to fight to get elected to a legislature that ranks dead last for female representation, and now I get to squeeze into a space that feels like it was designed by someone who thought women didn’t exist–or at least didn’t have bladders.”

America’s fight for “potty parity” began in the late 1980s, after one dad noticed his wife and daughter took way longer to use the bathroom than he did. Luckily for women everywhere, he was a senator–and thus took it on himself to bring more legislation for guaranteeing women’s toilets (bare minimum–or princess treatment?). The fact that it’s still a problem in our very legislatures, though, is wild.

Speaking on behalf of the issue, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Kathryn Anthony said that while the issue of potty parity seems comic, the issue runs far deeper than full bladders. “If you have an environment that is designed for half the population but forgets about the other half, you have a group of disenfranchised people and disadvantaged people.”

Still, the lack of women’s toilets in state legislatures is just one part of the bigger potty-parity puzzle. Men and women are typically given the same amount of square-footage allotment for building bathrooms, but urinals and troughs take up way less space than toilet stalls do. Developers could install more women’s toilets, but are dissuaded by the costs. So, women wait some 34 times longer than men do, and scarce restroom facilities have genuine economic and social implications on their quality of life. It’s the same sort of hostile architecture–and completely fixable problem–that holds in place because of our gendered architecture and outdated design bias.

Kentucky is currently planning renovations to its 155-year-old Capitol building, and legislators are hoping the changes will end the state’s bathroom disparity. For $300 million, though, they better be making more than just a few stalls.

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