Potty parity: First Democrats, then bureaucrats?

By Shane Harris, National Journal

Sporting venues often leave women flush with envy. They have to stand in endless bathroom lines at halftime while men zip in and out. But female convention-goers who fear the mad rushes to the restrooms each night after lengthy prime-time speeches will be relieved - in more ways than one- to hear this good news: Denver's arenas practice potty parity.

It seems only fitting that in a year that has seen the first serious woman presidential candidate,the Pepsi Center, home to the convention through Wednesday, has 198 toilets for women, compared with 45 toilets and 129 urinals for men. Invesco Field, where more than 75,000 people will gatherfor Barack Obama's acceptance speech on Thursday, has one toilet for every 100 men and one toiletfor every 57 women.

Those numbers may seem unfair to men, but building designers consider the many factors - from physiological to wardrobe-ial - that make stall stops lengthier for women. "You do take accountof the time it takes women to get in and out as opposed to men," said Brian Kitts, a spokesmanfor the Pepsi Center.

Indeed, Kitts noted that complaints about the 1-to-1 ratio at Denver's previous sports arena, which had long women's room lines, prompted the female-friendly fix when the Pepsi Center openedin 1999. The same is true of Invesco Field, where women Broncos fans no longer deal with the agonizing - and sometimes ugly - queues that awaited them at the old Mile High Stadium.

The Colorado Convention Center, where Democrats will hold meetings and caucuses throughout theweek, has the most innovative way of dealing with the issue. Since the male-to-female ratio varies depending on the type of event it's hosting, the center has movable walls that allow more toilets on the women's side if more women are coming, and vice versa.

Just over half - 50.1 percent - of Democratic convention delegates are female. That calls for a2-to-1 ratio of facilities for women over men, according to potty parity experts. (Yes, there are some.)

"Women ought to have more restroom facilities than men," said John Banzhaf, a George WashingtonUniversity law professor who has pushed for using wait times as the standard to determine the division of toilets.

Banzhaf supports legislation pending in Congress that would mandate such a 2-to-1 ratio in federalbuildings. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., has 65 co-sponsors - all Democrats.

National building code standards adopted in the past decade generally require new stadiums and other large structures to include more stalls for women, meaning longer lines are found in oldervenues. Robert Brubaker, program manager for the American Restroom Association, said that the building codes are a better place to address potty parity than in one-size-fits-all legislationthat doesn't account for different populations in different facilities.

"Legislation that says 2-to-1 is a very simplistic, mindless way to do it," Brubaker said.

Banzhaf noted that restrooms at the Capitol still fail to offer potty parity to women lawmakers,despite the ascendancy of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

But he said that the convention will be a good chance for Democratic Party officials to show whether they can outdo Republicans when it comes to toilet time for a key demographic group in this election. "If they don't come out ahead," Banzhaf said, "I think they'll be in real big trouble."