Hello my dear GFPs, and welcome to your regularly scheduled dose of gendered data news. This week we’re talking A LOT about peeing and since I know how much we all love to talk toilets, I’ll get straight to it.

Gender data gap of the week

GFPs, this missive comes to you direct from the queue for the ladies at COP27. It all started with this tweet:

Naturally, my interest was piqued and I had to know more. Was this true? Could we confirm it? GFPs, it was time for some TOILET DATA JOURNALISM.

BUT FIRST. Let’s remind ourselves of why we’re so exercised about toilets in the first place. When I wrote Invisible Women I knew *I* was annoyed about always having to queue for the toilet, in fact I knew most women were annoyed since I have queued with them in Queues I Have Known. But I didn’t expect toilets to become one of the most famous bits of the book, inspiring women around the world to send me pictures of Toilet Queues They Have Also Known.

But then again…it did kind of make sense that the toilets section took off.

Women are used to being blamed for the queue. In fact, we’re used to being mocked for it by men who laughingly assume that it’s somehow our fault for “taking too long”. Ho ho ho silly ladies probably faffing about doing our make up amirite, as if it’s the mirrors we’re queuing for.

And even though we know we aren’t queueing for mirrors, we have internalised this blame, and also assumed that we’ve somehow been…pee-ing wrong. And so, for women to discover that this really bloody annoying thing that we’re used to being sniggered at for, was actually a result of structural male bias…well, it got a lot of women quite worked up. Being ridiculed for the effects of discrimination can do that.

For those of you who haven’t yet got around to reading that copy of Invisible Women glaring balefully at you from your bookshelf, let me quickly summarise the issue.

First up: equal floor space ≠ equal provision. This is because men’s toilets have urinals and they take up less space than cubicles. Simple maths therefore dictates that if you allocate equal floor space to the male and female toilets you can have more people relieving themselves at any one time in the gents than in the ladies. So equal floorspace ACTUALLY= more provision for men. And since most toilets work on the basis that equal floorspace is, well, equal, this means that in almost every publicly accessible toilet you’ve ever been to, men have had more facilities than women. And so begins the queue.

The irony of all this is that it is women, not men, who need more provision because there is more demand on the female toilets.

For a start, women do the majority of the world’s unpaid care work (see Invisible Women pp…well, pretty much the whole thing tbh) they are much more likely than men to be accompanied by children (or anyone else who needs help using a toilet). And the result of this is that there are simply more people using the female toilets.

This higher number of people is compounded by the proportion of women who will need to use the toilet more frequently. Anyone who is pregnant for example, will need to use the toilet a lot more often. And finally, yes, women do tend to take a bit longer than men, and no, it’s not because we’re faffing with our hair; it’s because we’re changing our sanitary towel or tampon. And it’s also because the mechanics of peeing just take longer for a woman. Find an empty stall, take off your coat and bag and try to find somewhere to hang them up. Probably wipe the toilet seat. Pull down your pants, sit down, and only then, pee. And then reverse the whole process before coming out and freeing up the cubicle for the next woman or child. These extra moments may seem trivial, but times them by the hundreds of people trying to use the toilet and they all add up.

So the queue for the ladies is a very simple result of men being given more provision when it is the women’s toilet that has more demand. And this blatantly and irrationally inequitable situation is being hidden by what on the surface looks like “equality.”

The question is, is this what happened at COP27?

GFPs, I have assembled a crack team of intrepid reporters, who will stop at NOTHING to get answers to this pressing question:

GFPS, meet your GFPs-on-the-ground, Shawnee Traylor, Brenna Boehman, Cora Hersh, Helena Cheslack, and Ciara Willis. Thanks to their groundbreaking and perilous research, I can confirm that it’s even worse than we feared. I can in fact report that male attendees at COP27 have MORE THAN DOUBLE THE PROVISION TO WOMEN.

My moles went deep into Zone B in the Blue Zone, which they tell me is one of the largest buildings in the conference, hosting many of the pavilions, and I can now share with you some hot-off-the-press data

It transpires, after some hard data crunching, that the norm for the toilets in Zone B was that the women’s bathrooms had 7 cubicles, while the men’s bathrooms had 7 cubicles…and EIGHT URINALS.

As you may be able to guess from this, that meant that the organisers of COP27 weren’t even deploying the tried and trusted equal floorspace method, since, in the words of one of my intrepid reporters, the men’s bathrooms were…

GFPs, they’re not even TRYING. They’re not even PRETENDING TO TRY.

And naturally, their not-even-pretending-to-try-ing this has resulted in situations like this…

…popping up all over the shop.

The situation in the Green Zone, outside the official COP, is little better. Men still have more provision than women, with ten (7 stalls & 3 urinals) facilities in the men’s bathrooms to 7 stalls in the women’s bathrooms.

Perhaps you might think that toilet ratios are the least of our worries when faced with the troubles of the climate crisis, but I disagree. I would argue that they are a visible symptom of a much larger set of issues that all centre on our failure to value women.

The toilet queue is a stark reminder that we simply do not value women’s time. Not even when they’re in the running for the president of the United States of America. And in the context of COP27, it’s another reminder, alongside the traditional underrepresentation of women in the country delegations, that we do not value women’s expertise, (btw the representation of women in the country delegations is different to the attendees overall, which I’m told skews female, so this is not an excuse for the dire bathroom situation).

And this of course is before we start talking about the fact that it is women who are disproportionately affected by climate change (see also, Invisible Women pp.298-309), it is women who are driving the most ambitious climate policies — and yet it is women who are missing from the negotiation tables. Will the impact of climate change on women be accounted for in the resulting discussions and policy proposals?

Here is a nice round-up from of why female representation matters in climate negotiations from the Women in Energy Program at Columbia University’s Centre on Global Energy Policy:

[W]omen’s political representation contributes to higher spending on international health and foreign aid, as well as expenditures more directly relevant to women’s needs.[13] That’s important for climate change deliberations where direct climate finance and aid from developed nations to the global south for adaptation and mitigation responses are essential to facilitating global agreements and implementation. Ultimately, women’s critical role in climate policy stems in large measure from the fact that women, on average, tend to care more about climate change than men.[14] Women leaders also tend to have and maintain better access to local community networks that can inform negotiating positions and broaden understanding of social issues that need to be resolved to promote successful accords.[15] This is particularly important for climate change policy where geographic impacts are unequal, and knowledge of localized effects is evolving. Higher participation from women in climate negotiations can boost the collective intelligence and broaden the perspective of the negotiating group, thus leading to more positive outcomes.[16]

I’m sure it’ll be fine….

Default male of the week

This week’s DMOTW comes to you courtesy of GFP Rachel, who emailed me this Christiane Amanpour segment saying she had thought of me immediately when she saw it…

I have no idea what she’s talking about… 🥸

It’s a pretty amazing story about Ksenia and Andrii, a wife and husband team who are TV journalists in their real lives, but since Russia’s invasion have turned their hands to procuring and distributing army gear for female soldiers. They started, says Andrii, because when his sister signed up “she received a men’s uniform, men’s underwear, everything designed for men.” So they decided to do something about it, and set up “Zemiyachki,” which means, according to Google Translate, compatriots — although Google’s alternative translation is “countrywomen”, so…is this a default female??? Any Ukrainian-speaking GFPs out there who who could confirm either way?

Anyway, Zemiyachki, default female or not in name, are certainly default female in spirit, and their aim is to kit out the over 50,000 Ukrainian women who are currently fighting the Russians - 5000 of them on the front line. Zemiyachki have since produced 300 uniforms, with a further 3000 in the works. They have sourced smaller boots, lighter kevlar plates for flak vests, and, following a request from a female friend who has become a sniper on the frontline, pregnancy fatigues. Because there are pregnant women fighting on the front line and they don’t have the kit they need.

Or they didn’t. They do now.

A woman who was visiting the depot while CNN was there filming said that the uniforms made the female soldiers feel “human,” to know that someone understood that they were tired of wearing clothes that a three sizes too big.

As well as providing uniforms that actually fit female bodies,  Zemiyachki are also distributing sanitary products and, most excitingly of all for this GFP, something called “Freshette” which is basically a shewee. “They pee like men!” says Andrii. Next step I guess is for them to source trousers with a zip round the back instead of the front…

Poppy pic of the week

That’s it! Until next time, my dear GFPs…xoxoxo