Whether you call it the Ladies’ Room or the Loo, the Potty or the Powder Room, access to toilets is — worldwide — a woman’s issue.
In places with adequate, modern plumbing, it’s about demanding “potty parity.” What woman hasn’t known inconvenience and discomfort when waiting in crazy long lines at a public restroom, often with little kids in tow, trying to “hold it,” worrying over the first twinge of menstrual cramps or a crucial vote pending: women serving in the U.S. House of Representatives didn’t have a restroom of their own until 2011. Before that, they had to tinkle with the tourists in a room clear across Statuary Hall, far from the House Chamber.
In places without adequate sanitation, the lack of bathroom facilities can be a matter of life and death for women and children, and that’s no bathroom joke. An estimated 2.5 BILLION people (37% of the world’s population) have next to no place to do their business, which means squatting where they can and wading through puddles and all kinds of crap, in all kinds of weather, fending off snakes, bugs, and human predators.
“PEE-IN” PROTEST ON HARVARD YARD
Florynce Kennedy
Florynce “Flo” Kennedy (1916-2000), the radical feminist lawyer and Black Power activist who coined the motto “Don’t agonize, organize,” was known for her outrageous tactics in the fight against racism and sexism.
She understood the hardships faced by trailblazers with full bladders at Harvard University, where female students had to be excused from classes or exams to go in search of the rare toilet for women.
On June 7, 1973, Kennedy led women around Harvard Yard, chanting, “To pee or not to pee, that is the question.” Their numbers grew when they came to the steps of Lowell Hall, an old building with only one bathroom — for men.
Addressing the crowd, Kennedy explained that restricting bathrooms was a way to reinforce the superior-inferior relationship of different segments of a community, just as public bathrooms had been used to reinforced racial divisions for years in the South.
Several women stepped forward with glass jars and splashed bright yellow liquid on the steps. As the crowd cheered, Flo gave a raised fist gesture of protest and warned, “Unless Lowell Hall gets a room for women so that women taking exams don’t have to hold it in, run across the street, or waste time deciding whether to pee or not to pee, next year we will be back, doing the real thing!”
INDIA: “NO TOILET, NO BRIDE”
Around the world, women and girls head for streams, trees, fields, or bushes in the dim light of dawn and dusk, and, on top of all the inconvenience and unpleasantness that implies, risk sexual attack every time they have to pee. In India, an estimated 620 million people have one option: “open defecation” — answering the call of nature, quite literally, in nature. More people in India have cell phones than indoor toilets.
When Anita Narre got married in May, 2011, she walked out on her husband two days later, promising to come back when he built an indoor toilet for her. Her demand not only worked, but inspired a government sponsored “No Toilet, No Bride” campaign. Now, all across the country, there are signs and murals painted on the sides of buildings reading “NO TOILET, NO BRIDE.” Other murals show a woman squatting, looking anxiously over her shoulder at an approaching male, and dreaming of an indoor toilet.
Rape happens everywhere, but last year (May, 2014) two teenaged cousins in rural northern India, desiring nothing more than to relieve themselves before going to bed, went out and never came back. They were gang-raped, then strung up in a mango tree where neighbors found their bodies the next morning. Rape is common, but hanging dead girls’ bodies from mango trees is not. This crime shocked the nation and sparked protests across India, raising awareness about sexual assault and the basic need for easy access to safe toilets and privacy for women and girls.
KENYA: “FLYING TOILET” PROTEST
In October, 2014, protesters marched to the Kenyan Ministry of Health offices from the impoverished “informal settlement” known as Mukuru on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. They’d had enough of “flying toilets.”
“Flying toilets” are plastic bags full of urine and feces used by people without toilets. The bags are then hurled through the air. Sometimes, they bounce off tin roofs or walls, hit people, or collect along roadsides and train tracks, burst open and splatter excrement, which attracts flies or leaks into water systems. The cause of a train derailment on Kenyan tracks several years ago was determined to be an accumulation of “flying toilets.”
The Mukuru protesters, mostly women, waved signs and sang songs in the streets of Nairobi’s financial district, deliberately slowing traffic to protest the government’s slow action in providing sanitation facilities. Once at the Health Ministry office building, the women staged a sit-in. They wore headbands printed with the Swahili word for “togetherness.”
SOUTH AFRICA: “POO WARS”
Cape Town: The media have dubbed protests here the “poo wars.” Frustrated by failed promises to provide better sanitation services and unfazed by the threat of arrest, protesters in recent years have dumped bags of human waste inside government offices and thrown raw sewage at legislators.
Soweto: In June, 2014, police used teargas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters in this Johannesburg neighborhood, when they blocked a major road in Soweto and pulled down their pants to show their scorn. They’d inherited the “bucket system” from the apartheid (white rule) era. Although apartheid was officially discontinued in 1994, the people of Soweto are still using buckets for toilets, and they’ve had enough.
Chatsworth: In the Crossmoor settlement outside of this Durban suburb, angry residents have blocked traffic by setting tires on fire. One protester was photographed with a toilet seat around her head. Their demands were basic: toilets and water.
CHINA: WOMEN’S TOILET TAKEOVER
After being forced to “hold it” one time too many, Li Tingting, a university student, led a nonviolent action dubbed, “Occupy Men’s Toilets” in February, 2012, demanding more public toilets for women.
To protest the unfair ratio of male to female toilet stalls throughout Guangzhou, in south China, 20 women occupied a men’s restroom near a park. The women stayed only three minutes in each of a series of “occupations.” They apologized to the men and asked them, in solidarity, to hold their bladders for a few minutes.
A few days later, toilet access activists attempted to occupy men’s toilets in Beijing, near a bus terminal. They were reprimanded and detained by police, but the English-language edition of China Daily (a state paper) ran an article the next day with the headline: “TOILET OCCUPATION GROUP IS FLUSHED WITH SUCCESS,” congratulating the activists on highlighting a problem.
On November 19, 2014, “World Toilet Day” (yes, there really is a World Toilet Day, and, having researched this blog essay, I now understand why), Li and two dozen students and engineers petitioned the government, specifically calling for 2 women’s toilets for every 1 for men. They posted photos online of women holding signs that read “2:1.” When Beijing hosted the 2008 Olympics Games, they’d used a ratio of 4-to-1 for the tourists.
TO GO DEEPER
Articles:
“The Everyday Sexism of Women Waiting in Public Toilet Lines” by Soraya Chemaly, Time, January 5, 2015.
“Women in the House Get a Restroom” by Nancy McKeon, The Washington Post, July 28, 2011
“To Pee or Not to Pee, Sexism at Harvard” by Irene Davall, On the Issues Magazine, Summer, 1990.
“In India, Latrines Are Truly Life Savers” by Vivekananda Nemana and Ankita Rao, The New York Times, Nov. 13, 2014.
“Crossmoor Residents Blockade Road, Demand Water and Toilets” blog Shannon In South Africa.
“Nairobi’s Female Slum Dwellers March for Sanitation and Land Rights” by Mark Anderson, The Guardian, Oct. 29, 2014.
“Demanding Toilet Justice for the Women of China” by Jess Macy Yu, The New York Times, November 19, 2014.
“‘Occupy Toilet’ Movement Spreads” by Frank Lade, Weekly World News, Feb. 24, 2012
Videos:
“India: No Toilet, No Bride” United Nations story, (2:30 mins.)
“India’s Toilet Revolution” — how lack of safe sanitation facilities impacts the women (6:11 mins.)
Photo Credit: Nairobi women’s sit-in protest lack of toilets. Photo by Karel Prinsloo
Last week, two Saudi Arabian women were finally let out of jail. The crime for which they’d been imprisoned? — driving-while-female.
Women in Saudi Arabia have a high rate of literacy, are afforded access to advanced education, use social media more than their sisters in the U.S., and are respected in their professional work as doctors, teachers, and businesswomen.
1990: In Riyadh, on November 6, 1990, after seeing American women GI’s driving, almost 50 prominent Saudi women took to the wheel in defiance of the prohibition. Many were professors or businesswomen. They knew they would be stopped and reprimanded, but believed that their protest was an important step in raising public awareness. After their action, some were called whores. Others received death threats. Their passports were confiscated. Several lost their jobs or were denied promotions.
2007: At a World Economic Forum press conference, Princess Lolwah Al-Faisal made headlines when she said women should be allowed to drive. This was the first time a member of the royal family had made such a statement.
2011: The “Saudi Women’s Driving Initiative” was announced for June 17, 2011. To generate support for that action, Manal Al-Sharif, in headscarf and black abaya, posted a videotape of herself driving on You-Tube and Facebook (see below). She had 600,000 views in just days.
The day of action raised the level of debate in Saudi Arabia and generated global support. Women in other countries videotaped themselves driving and posted their clips on the “Honk for Saudi Women” YouTube channel.
2013: On October 26, 2013, approximately 60 women took to the wheel in Riyadh, Jeddah, and al-Ahsa, armed with licenses from other countries. Supportive friends video-documented their acts of civil disobedience.
Articles: 
Beheadings are in the news. So is romance. They converge on Valentine’s Day, named for a priest who was beheaded in Rome on February 14, 270.
We recoil from images of recent beheadings and immolations by ISIL. But President Obama, in his February 5th address at the National Prayer Breakfast, reminded us that, like today’s Muslims, Christians, too, have seen their faith perverted when atrocities were committed in their name.
> Banner Project: In the early 20th century, the NAACP led an anti-lynching campaign. Each time news was received that a person had been lynched, they hung a banner outside the NAACP’s NYC office that read, A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY. Decades later, when Rev. Dr. Constance M. Baugh read about this, she was inspired to institute a similar practice at Brooklyn’s Church of Gethsemane (Presbyterian Church USA) to keep the community mindful of capital punishment and, on appropriate days, hung a banner from a 2nd-story window: ONE MORE PERSON WAS EXECUTED TODAY.
> Not In My Name: On evenings when an execution was scheduled somewhere in the nation, members of the pacifist-anarchist Living Theatre gathered at Times Square to perform Not In My Name, a street theater play about ending the death penalty’s cycle of violence and revenge. Judith Malina cofounded The Living Theatre with Julian Beck (1925-1985). She and members of the troupe performed the 15-minute protest play at the publication party for my anti-death penalty book in 2003! (In Luba Lukova’s brilliant poster, one person is shown breaking the cycle — an image of hope.)
Death Defying: Dismantling the Execution Machinery in 21st Century U.S.A. 
When Ruth Powell arrived in D.C. in 1941, she was warned not to expect to eat in the downtown area. Raised in a Boston suburb, she had no experience with the Jim Crow South. The warning barely registered. The young student was excited about attending Howard University in the nation’s capital.
One January day in 1943, Ruth and two other coeds ordered hot chocolates at a store on Pennsylvania Avenue. At first, they were refused service. When the three women didn’t move, the police were called. To the women’s surprise, the cops ordered the waitress to bring the hot drinks. The catch came at the end: instead of being charged ten cents each, the drinks were billed at 25 cents. Ruth and her friends protested the overcharge and left the correct amount on the counter. That’s when they were arrested, taken to jail in a police wagon, and held under suspicion of being “subversive agents.”
Good news! One activist can inspire another. Ruth Powell inspired her fellow Howard U. classmate Pauli Murray (1910-1985). A diminutive, cross-dressing, woman-loving, radical black activist ahead of her time, Murray not only imagined the power of a sit-in campaign long before it caught on in the 1960s, but she coined the term “Jane Crow” to describe the varieties of oppression faced by black women, was arrested in the 1940s for not moving to the back of the bus, won the deep respect and friendship of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, was a co-founder, with Bayard Rustin, of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and NOW (National Organization for Women), became a lawyer, and, eventually, the first black woman Episcopal priest. In 2012, 27 years after her death, she was named an Episcopal saint.
The following spring, however, the students met with disappointment after initial success at integrating Thompson’s cafeteria, part of a national chain located in downtown D.C., open 24 hours a day.
Like Powell, Edna Griffin (1909-2000) was a New Englander. After graduating from Fisk University in Tennessee, she moved to Iowa in 1947 with her husband, a med student.