Episode 4
· 54:50
This is Feminist Acts. I'm Becky Batagol. Toilets are fundamental to what we need to be able to do every day. But at the same time, because we segregate them by gender, they're also very political, aren't they, Kate?
Kate Seear:Yeah. Absolutely. So you said, Becky, that toilets play a fundamental part in our lives. And let's go back to the fundamentals because the design and implementation of toilet blocks, public toilet spaces, and corporate toilets throughout the country are actually governed by regulations. So first off, we're gonna go and delve into those regulations.
Kate Seear:We're gonna hear about what they are, how they work, how they regulate the design of toilets. From there, we're going to expand out into a really rich and fascinating conversation about what toilets mean to us and how they can be made accessible and safe for all. So to kick off this really, really important discussion, let's bring in Doctor. Sean Mulcahy from the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University. Sean's going take a slightly different approach by reading to us a regulatory impact statement, and you'll hear why shortly.
Sean Mulcahy:This regulatory impact statement examines proposed regulations to provide requirements relating to all gender facilities for the use of women and men as well as gender diverse people in certain public buildings including accommodation, office buildings, shops, restaurants, car parks, warehouses, storage buildings, factories, healthcare buildings, schools, university sports facilities, nightclubs and aged care facilities. The government's considered the new national construction code which came into operation on the 05/01/2023 and only stipulates sanitary facilities for females and males. The government's considered this in line with the principles set down in the Gender Equality Act of 2020 including the principle that gender inequality may be compounded by other forms of discrimination or disadvantage that a person may experience based on their gender identity. This principle recognizes that gender diverse Victorians may experience discrimination or disadvantage that compounds gender inequality. In this case the code does not stipulate non binary facilities.
Sean Mulcahy:In consideration of the code's impact on gender diverse people and to ensure that sanitary facilities are inclusive of those who identify outside of the gender binary, the government's determined to develop additional requirements for all gender facilities in certain Victorian public buildings.
Becky Batagol:Few issues explore the tension between feminism and trans inclusion, quite like the question of who gets to use which bathroom. My name's Becky Batagol, and I'm a law reform expert from Monash University. The issue of toilets seems to be the flashpoint of so much in public consciousness today, evoking major responses from all quarters. Today, we're using toilets as a lens to explore feminism, trans and gender diverse inclusion. I'm joined today by my cohost, Professor Kate Seear from Deakin University.
Becky Batagol:Awesome to have you here, Kate.
Kate Seear:Oh, thanks, Becky. Good to see you and really looking forward to this conversation because it's so topical and... But also incredibly important. And as you say, really exposes some of the tensions between different feminist perspectives and and accounts of inclusion. So it's great to have this conversation.
Becky Batagol:I think it's the kind of topic that lots of people who involved in law reform and parliaments and policy making wonder about and question about. So I'm really glad that we're gonna delve deep into it today.
Kate Seear:Yeah. And we're really lucky to be joined by a couple of experts who are going to look at this issue from different disciplinary perspectives. Our first guest is doctor Sean Mulcahy. Sean's based at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University and has spent many years looking into all gender sanitary facilities. His work has led to significant changes in policy in Australia, and Sean more broadly works on LGBTQIA plus inclusion issues, which we're gonna talk about as well.
Kate Seear:So, Sean, welcome to the show.
Sean Mulcahy:Thank you for having me on.
Kate Seear:Sean, let's kick off by just hearing a little bit about you and your work more broadly. What are the key issues that you work on?
Sean Mulcahy:So I'm a research fellow. I'm based at the Australian Research Centre in Sex Health and Society, which is in the School of Psychology and Public Health at La Trobe University. But my background is as a legal researcher. I have a joint PhD in law and theater from Monash University and the University of Warwick. We can get into the theater stuff later.
Sean Mulcahy:Yeah. And I have a history of longstanding advocacy for LGBTIQA plus communities in Victoria. I was for a number of years the co convener of the Victorian Pride Lobby, which is a Victorian based advocacy group for gay, bisexual, queer, and same gender attracted Victorians and also works quite collaboratively with trans, intersex, and asexual organizations. As part of my continuing advocacy, I co lead the Victorian Pride Lobby's Rainbow Local Government Campaign, which supports LGBTIQA plus inclusion across Victoria's 79 local councils. And considering that councils often manage public toilets, the issue of toilets has often come up in our advocacy work.
Kate Seear:Sean, we can't go any further without stopping you right there and asking you to tell us a bit more about this work on law and theater. What is the connection, and how have you engaged in theater and your work?
Sean Mulcahy:So my background is in theater. I did a degree in performing arts before I moved into my law degree in part to satisfy my parents' desire to actually have a profitable employment. And then when I picked up my PhD in law, my supervisors who were a wonderful combination, one of whom was based in the Monash Center for Theatre and Performance, Felix Nobis, who was an actor that had always played lawyers on TV. And my other supervisor, professor Gary Watt, based at the law school at the University of Warwick, was a lawyer that trained actors at the Royal Shakespeare Company on rhetoric, said, you've got this unique background of theater and law, why not combine the two? So my PhD was really looking at how is law performed in everyday court settings.
Sean Mulcahy:So how do we experience going to the courtroom? How do people dress? How do we use space? How do we use intonation, the cadence of speaking within court? How does that all affect legal decision making?
Kate Seear:You've also got a really important role with
Becky Batagol:the
Kate Seear:Victorian government's justice task force. Can you tell us a little bit about that role?
Sean Mulcahy:So I co chair the Victorian government's LGBTIQA plus justice working group. We advise the Department of Justice and Community Safety and the Victorian attorney general on issues ranging from police to prisons to law reform for LGBTQA plus Victorians.
Kate Seear:Yeah. Wonderful, Sean. We'll get into some of that other work in a little while, but I want to start off by just talking about the proposal that you've produced for our Feminist Legislation Project. And just a few moments ago, we heard you read something called a regulatory impact statement, and this is something that's different to the parliamentary second reading speeches that we've heard in other episodes. So for our listeners, can you explain what a regulatory impact statement actually is and why you use that for this episode and for your proposal?
Sean Mulcahy:So unlike all of the other contributions to the Feminist Legislation Project, I am not proposing to amend a piece of legislation per se. I'm proposing to amend a regulation. So for folks that might not be familiar, legislation or what we commonly call law is a document that's passed by the parliament, and it may create the opportunity for regulations to be set underneath it, and that's something that is made by the government as opposed by the parliament. So when you're making a piece of regulation, you're not speaking to it in parliament, you're developing what's called a regulatory impact statement. So they're prepared by the government, its department or its agencies to explain the expected impact in terms of cost and benefits of the proposed piece of regulation.
Sean Mulcahy:And therefore it has quite a different tone to it than a second reading speech would in parliament. These are documents that are uploaded with the regulations and they are put out in draft form and therefore they have a different kind of cadence than you would have in a second reading speech.
Becky Batagol:Sean, before we jump into you telling us a little bit about your proposal, I'm really keen for you to explain to us and to our listeners who might be wondering what you mean when you talk about gender diverse people and also what you mean by trans people, please.
Sean Mulcahy:So when I'm talking about gender diverse, I'm meaning people that identify side of what we'd call the gender binary of female or male. So these people would have what we call non binary gender identities that are neither male nor female. And therefore, this poses unique challenges considering that we operate in a largely gendered world where many facilities are created according to this particular gender binary. Now when we're talking about trans people, these are people whose gender identity is different to the sex that they were assigned at birth. Now their gender identity could be within the binary and for most trans people it is.
Sean Mulcahy:For most people they are still male or female. There'll be some trans people who are non binary themselves and therefore fall into that category of gender diverse. So they're two distinct but overlapping cohorts.
Becky Batagol:Thank you. That makes it really super clear. Could you tell us a little bit about your proposal for reform of regulations?
Sean Mulcahy:So when I was developing my proposal, I was confronted with a problem in our current national construction code. And under that current code, gender diverse people, that's people who identify outside of the gender binary, they're compelled to use facilities that are intended for people with a disability despite the fact that there are quite differing needs for gender diverse people and people with disabilities. So this is because the current code includes provisions for unisex facilities for people with a disability, but it doesn't provide general all gender facilities for people without a disability. So what this effectively means is that both of these cohorts, gender diverse people and people with a disability are compelled to use a single unisex facility, and therefore it's compounding inequality for both groups. So what I propose in these regulations is a model that doesn't reduce the number of female or male sanitary facilities or facilities for people with a disability.
Sean Mulcahy:They simply require the addition of facilities that include all genders so that there'll be one all gender facility for every 100 people accommodated in the building except for larger buildings without reducing the ratio for female and male facilities. And it's an approach now that's being adopted by workplaces and other buildings across Victoria and Australia.
Becky Batagol:So can I clarify and I'd love you to talk about what that would actually look like? That would mean that if your proposal was put into place in those kind of workplaces, you would have male, female, plus all gender facilities, plus facilities for people with a disability?
Sean Mulcahy:Absolutely. Okay. Yep. So you'd have all of those four facilities in public buildings.
Kate Seear:Sean, at the top of the episode, we flagged that this is an incredibly contentious issue, and it's one that's become central to culture wars around the world. Many groups who are opposed to reforms to toilets and also opposed to trans and nonbinary people accessing women's toilets in particular say that they are opposed on the basis of women's safety. And we wanna give you an opportunity to respond to those kind of critiques and tell us how you feel about them because they're they're at the heart of debates about these issues.
Sean Mulcahy:Thanks. And I think it's important to acknowledge those critiques that do exist. And we've seen as the Australian Building Codes Board goes through a review of the National Construction Code, some of these same arguments emerge. And I think what undergirds many of these arguments is a fear that trans women or gender diverse people or men will, to put it bluntly, sexually victimize cisgender women if inclusive sanitary facilities, that's either all gender facilities or gendered facilities that are based on a person's gender identity as opposed to their sex assigned at birth are in place. And I should say when I talk about cisgender women, this is women whose gender identity aligns with the sex that they were assigned at birth.
Sean Mulcahy:Under these arguments is an assumption that trans women are seeking access to female facilities with a predatory intent towards cisgender women. And it also presumes in some cases that transgender women are actually men and that they're trying to obtain easy access to women's facilities and spaces. But there's been research done on this and it's found that these claims lack evidence. There's no evidence of an increase in harm to cisgender women from inclusive sanitary facilities, and in fact evidence that suggests that opposition to inclusive sanitary facilities is often motivated by some prejudicial attitudes towards trans people rather than necessarily concerns about women's safety. This isn't entirely new, similar claims have been made in the past about same sex attracted people.
Sean Mulcahy:There was a moral panic not that long ago about men having sex with other men in public toilet facilities. On the contrary though, there's a lot of evidence to support inclusive sanitary facilities. So large scale studies show that most people are in favour of inclusive sanitary facilities, inclusive sanitary facilities are perceived to be safer by gender and racial minorities. But if we can zoom out for a little bit, I think there is a need to be able to discuss these issues in a way that challenges these prejudicial assumptions and champions a culture of mutual understanding and respect. And I think what has been really effective in the Feminist Legislation Project is that opportunity to have this debate in a way that isn't guided by prejudice, but is guided by an an understanding and an inclination towards mutual respect and respectful disagreement.
Kate Seear:So, Sean, you've talked a bit about the harms or potential harms for cisgender women in these public spaces in bathrooms and toilets. I wanna flip that for a moment and ask you what we know about the harms that might exist for queer populations, trans populations, non binary, gender diverse populations in public spaces like bathrooms.
Sean Mulcahy:Well, putting on my regulatory impact statement, Hat, let's think about this in terms of costs. So there's a lot of costs if there aren't adequate all gender facilities provided in public buildings. These are health costs. We have to remember that access to sanitation is a basic human right. It's a key determinant of health that's essential to our basic human dignity.
Sean Mulcahy:If people can't access toilets that impacts their health, their well-being. There's also social disruption costs, economic loss, lost business and tourism and legal costs as well too because there are the chances of potential legal challenges because the National Sex Discrimination Act prohibits discrimination on the grounds of both sex and gender identity in the provision of goods, services and facilities, which include the provision of toilet facilities. So arguably the failure to provide adequate toilet facilities may amount to discrimination even if it's indirect, and it will also create a risk to people's health and safety. If we look at America, which is where a lot of this debate is playing out, in North Carolina where they introduced what's called a bathroom bill that restricted access to bathrooms for trans and gender diverse people, that cost the state more than 3,700,000,000 US dollars in lost businesses over the dozen of years in which it was in place. And this is due to businesses moving interstate, artists canceled concerts, sporting events were scrapped, conventions were scrapped, television production moved elsewhere, tourism declined.
Sean Mulcahy:So if we look at it even from just a purely economic argument, which is a bit reductive, providing all gender facilities is cost effective, But not doing so also creates a cost to people that's not just financial but it's deeply personal in that it impacts the equal opportunity and human rights of gender diverse people. And it does not accord a right that is a right that extends to everybody to equal protection of the law without discrimination. It doesn't accord that right to trans and gender diverse people who should be able to access sanitary facilities for their own health and well-being.
Kate Seear:Sean, why do you think it is that people get so fired up about toilets, and why is it that toilets have become sort of ground zero for this global debate about trans, intersex, nonbinary, gender diverse rights?
Sean Mulcahy:It's a good question, which I would love to know the answer to because I think that would resolve a lot of the conflicts that we have in place. But you're right to say that there is a culture war around the issue of transgender people's access to bathrooms of their affirm gender. And it's, I think, as you've alluded to a greater debate of the functions of toilets as a public space or a space to provide privacy, safety, even safety from other people. So as I mentioned before, various US states, including North Carolina, but also Florida have enacted what they call bathroom bills that deny access to public toilets by gender or gender identity. Similarly, we're seeing in The UK where the British Equality and Human Rights Commission recently developed a draft code of practice that stipulates that trans people can't access the toilet that aligns with their agenda following a recent, if I can say controversial, Supreme Court ruling over there.
Sean Mulcahy:But, again, we'd be naive to think that this is just a culture war that's playing out overseas. Recently, colleagues and I identified several local councils in our state here in Victoria that have trans or non binary bathroom bans in their local laws. And it is an issue that attracts a lot of attention from regulators, but also community members that tend to get incredibly worked up over these matters.
Becky Batagol:Thanks, Sean. I really like your focus on evidence based, and I think I'm gonna add a word, kind debate around these issues. So you've been advocating around all gender inclusive toilets for some time. Keen to know if you've seen any examples of where existing buildings have been retrofitted to have inclusive toilets in the kind of model that you proposed of having male toilets, female toilets, all gender toilets and toilets for people with disability. And I'm just in my head imagining, let's say a council or a school or a corporation saying, well, we...
Becky Batagol:We've got this existing envelope. It's only this size. How can we actually do what you're suggesting in that kind of small space? Have you got any examples you've seen?
Sean Mulcahy:I think a lot of businesses and buildings are now working to incorporate all gender facilities. One of the struggles that we've had, which is really what this chapter is grappling with, is that there's no clear indication within the National Construction Code which is kind of the instructive force for building regulations around the provision of all gender facilities. So it's also difficult for councils or other building operators to be able to incorporate all gender facilities in line with the National Construction Code. Now in May 2026, the National Construction Code will be revised and able to be adopted by various states and territories. And the model that the Australian Building Codes Board has gone with is the option to convert existing gendered facilities into all gender facilities.
Sean Mulcahy:Whilst that is in some ways good and well intentioned, I do worry that it runs the risk of pitting one community against another. It still maintains for most buildings a base requirement for gendered facilities, but particularly in an environment where there's an increasing recognition of the need for more female sanitary facilities in public buildings To be in a situation where builders and building owners have to effectively choose between different users is going to be challenging, and I think it does two things. Firstly, I think there's an inclination on building construction companies and those that design buildings to just basically follow the code. So if the code says you have to do something, you'll do it, but you won't necessarily go above and beyond. So there's a risk that all gender facilities are just not thought through.
Sean Mulcahy:And the second is that it opens up a difficult debate around whether we should, to put it bluntly, remove that male or that female facility and make that an all gendered facility rather than just saying, which is really what the model that I propose in the chapter is about, that we can do both. We can have gendered, we can have all gendered, and we're not taking from one another. So there is that particular challenge that lies ahead from May 2026.
Becky Batagol:Sean, have you seen your proposal put into place anywhere? Have you seen it done successfully?
Sean Mulcahy:I think where it's been done more successfully is in WorkSafe Victoria, which put out a compliance code for workplace amenities. That followed years of lobbying from transgender Victorians, and particularly want to acknowledge Sally Goldner who's a long standing member and founder of Transgender Victoria who's been instrumental in those efforts. What they do is include a minimum number of all gender toilets in workplaces without altering the ratio of male and female facilities, recognising that all people need to have access to clean and hygienic facilities at work and facilities that are appropriate for their needs.
Kate Seear:We've talked about this issue, Sean, as being at the heart of contemporary global debates and culture wars about inclusion and equality for queer populations. But, of course, it's by no means the only issue that affects these populations. There are many. Do you imagine a possible queer legislation project at some stage in the future that would pick up other issues beyond the one that you focused on?
Sean Mulcahy:It's a great question, and I do wanna acknowledge the Queer Judgments Project, which has just recently released a book containing queerings of judgments. And I think in the spirit of queerness, it's it's very creative in its approach. There are interventions which are poetic that play with the use of color and that play with law as a creative instrument as well too, which I think shows some exciting possibilities of where we could take law through adopting a queer lens. Now they are focused around court judgments, but I think there are ample opportunities to explore legislation as well too, particularly I think in Australia where we have perhaps less of a culture around strategic litigation, often LGBTIQA plus law reform efforts squarely focused around reform through parliament and through government in the case of regulation making. We could probably have a debate another day around perhaps why we don't have as much of a culture around strategic litigation, the lack of a federal human rights charter, maybe some of the rationale behind that.
Sean Mulcahy:But I think there's a lot of opportunities for us, particularly in the Australian context, to explore queer lawmaking through parliament and through government in the case of regulations.
Becky Batagol:Of course, many people who argue against changing up the way we do bathrooms and toilets come from an explicitly feminist approach. Sean, how is your proposal feminist? It's
Sean Mulcahy:a good question. It's something that I've grappled with myself. I come to this as a cisgender man and conscious of the politics around that and how that feeds in either explicitly or implicitly to the approach that I take within that chapter. I can't divorce myself from my background and the way that I've been socialized. At the same time too, I do try and ground this approach in the voices I hear from the trans and gender diverse community, including transgender women who are most impacted I think by the current debate around bathroom access.
Sean Mulcahy:And I also go back and in the chapter explore this regulatory reform through the lens of our state's Gender Equality Act. So this is a piece of, if I can say landmark legislation that requires the Victorian public sector to promote gender equality, including one of its principles that gender inequality may be compounded by other forms of discrimination or disadvantage that a person might experience based on their gender identity. So this principle, I argue, recognises at its core that gender diverse Victorians experience discrimination or disadvantage that compounds gender inequality. So providing all gender facilities in addition to gendered facilities particularly for women, I think accords with those principles and the requirement for the Victorian public sector to take necessary and proportionate steps towards achieving gender equality within that state, as well as a positive duty that's under the Equal Opportunity Act to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate discrimination based on gender identity. Unfortunately, our federal law doesn't have that principle in it.
Sean Mulcahy:It only applies based on sex, but that's an argument for another day. But I think at its core, the Gender Equality Act recognises that for gender diverse Victorians who identify outside of the gender binary, they can actually have a level of discrimination or disadvantage that's compounded based on the very fact that they identify outside of the gender binary. So if we look at it through a feminist lens, which the Gender Equality Act is essentially trying to reduce into law these feminist principles around combating gender inequality, A feminist argument would acknowledge that gender inequality is compounded by certain experiences, whether that be a person's gender identity, whether that be their race, whether that be their sexual orientation, whether that be their sex characteristic. So I think in that sense it upholds and recognises the principles around feminist lawmaking.
Becky Batagol:I think I'm hearing, Sean, and you can confirm whether I'm right in your answer, that you're saying that gender inequality covers the experience both of cis women experiencing negative gender stereotypes, but also trans women and men and gender diverse people who who also experience harm because of their gender identity. Is that is that what you're saying?
Sean Mulcahy:It does. And I think if we also zoom out at a broader level, one of the other reforms around the National Construction Code is requiring the provision of sanitary disposal facilities in all toilets. Previously that was only required in female toilets, but this was in part due to advocacy from groups like Bins for Blokes that recognise that men who are experiencing continence issues also need to have sanitary disposal facilities in their toilets. So I think looking at these issues through a gendered lens also leads to benefits felt by other segments of the community and forces us to interrogate not just the architecture of public spaces like toilets, that is whether we have a male or female, a disabled and all gender, but the infrastructure of those spaces as well too. Do they include facilities that allow for the disposal of sanitary products?
Sean Mulcahy:Do they allow for sanitary dispensing facilities as well too?
Kate Seear:Sean, thank you so much for coming in and talking to Becky and I about all of that, an extremely complex and tricky subject matter, but absolutely wonderful to have your expertise over that. So thanks again.
Sean Mulcahy:Thank you for having me on. And if people are interested in finding out more about the reforms to the National Construction Code, which are coming through in 2026, they can jump onto the Australian Building Codes Board website.
Kate Seear:Fantastic. Doctor Sean Mulcahy from the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University. Thanks again. As we've been hearing across the course of this episode, the design of public spaces always involves balancing the needs of different people, and few spaces reveal that more clearly than the ones we separate by gender. Professor Niki Kalms is a founding director of the XYX Lab at Monash University.
Kate Seear:It leads national and international research on gender and place. Niki's work examines how design, public policy and law shape who feels safe and welcome in shared spaces and who doesn't. And together with Laura McVeigh, who's a principal research analyst at the Australian Institute of Criminology, she's written a commentary exploring what is at stake for women and gender diverse people as Australia rethinks the design of public facilities. Niki, welcome to the podcast.
Niki Kalms:Thank you so much for having me. So can we start off by just hearing a
Kate Seear:little bit about your work? What is it that you work on and what are the main issues that your work explores?
Niki Kalms:So the XYX Lab is a research lab, as you say, here at Monash University, and we are a group of interdisciplinary designers. So my background is in architecture and urban research. The co director, Gene Bawden, is a communication designer, and we work with researchers that are interested in policy and planning and all range of design practices. And we work in what we would describe as a participatory and co design methodology. So that's where we're really thinking very carefully about public places and the ways that the communities that we hope to serve would like to express their needs and desires and wishes about those communities and spaces.
Niki Kalms:So often we're working with architectural practitioners or local councils and government to think very carefully about what good design might be. And design, I mean, in a kind of broadly defined way. So that might be the material practices and things that we see in the public realm. But it also could be about communication campaigns and how we think about the kind of civic responsibilities we have to each other. So a really politically charged and interesting area that's very topical at the moment, often shaped by things that are not so great, like issues of safety and violence, but really important work that we're all really committed to.
Becky Batagol:Niki, we just heard Sean taking us through some of his proposals to change the National Construction Code. I know you don't necessarily agree with everything that Sean proposes. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your concerns about the proposal.
Niki Kalms:Well, I mean, wouldn't say that they're necessarily concerns and I would like to just begin by really supporting Sean's research in the ways that it champions the needs of gender diverse and trans communities. But I think one of the things that Laura and I are really interested in with our response to that particular chapter and proposal is that actually it doesn't go far enough in terms of inclusion. So one of the things that I've uncovered and the work that I do in the XYX lab around public spaces and places is the real complexities around the push for gender neutrality in all its different forms. So we see this not just in the design of toilets, but also in the public realm a lot. This is kind of rhetoric around neutral design.
Niki Kalms:So I'm really interested in how that kind of plays out with institutions and policies, but I think it's this point that we kind of think that this case for inclusion doesn't go far enough. If we're gonna do this incredibly important work, then let's really think very carefully about how we can make substantive radical change. And so if I was to speak more clearly about that, I think that the amendments to the regulations for the provisions of all gender or gender neutral, sometimes called unisex toilets, operate under an incorrect assumption that gender neutrality is what will lead to greater inclusion. And I think that one of the things that that the general public in particular and the media think is that being able to provide a facility that is sex and gender flexible will make things more equitable. And there's some counter research around that.
Niki Kalms:And so I think that what is really important about the proposed regulations is that there is a real push for inclusion. Of course, that's what we all want. But then I think it's just kind of perhaps how we get there that we need to think a little bit more about.
Kate Seear:Can you say a little bit more about that, Niki, and precisely what it is that you thought a proposal should look like?
Niki Kalms:Well, I think that one of the concerns that I have, you know, with a background in architecture and urban research, is that the ways that we're kind of moving towards gender neutral provisions. And I think one of the things that Laura and I are interested in talking about is the ways that potentially the kind of slippery slope towards only providing all gender provisions will multiply what we're currently seeing in the built environment, which is ad hoc arrangements where we start to see existing female or disabled toilets with a kind of gender neutral sign on them or they become the kind of all gender amenity. And what this does is really interesting because it leaves men's facilities intact, but actually reduces the provision for women. And I guess it's a really hot topic, women's toilets, because we know that that women are the ones that are queuing and it's... You know, there's a whole incredible research around how long it takes for women to use the toilet and how often they might be having to do other caring work in bathrooms.
Niki Kalms:So there's something really interesting about that move towards gender neutral provisions and who is burdened by that kind of change. Now one of the things that we're starting to kind of see is...
Niki Kalms:And and again, it's a really important push that we want workplaces and public buildings and institutions to provide gender inclusive facilities. But often what they do is that, as I said, they reconfigure the female toilet or the accessible toilet because that's the actual kind of low cost thing to do. And we're in an environment...
Niki Kalms:A building a building environment is where we're wanting to kind of maximize floor space and minimise particular spend. We've got to understand the kind of context that we're operating in. Nikki, what do you
Becky Batagol:think toilets represent drawing on your research over many years into public and private spaces and architectures and people's use of space?
Niki Kalms:Well, one of the things that I think comes up in in the historical research is that toilets are historically places of safety for women and girls, and they are places of danger for men. So now whether or not we still want to think about how we might recalibrate that in a contemporary society is something that is... I think is also worth talking about. But we also know that they are places for some people of rest or of drug use or places where people have sex. And all of these things need to be part of this radical redesign that Laura and I are talking about.
Niki Kalms:They are places of refuge and solitude, And they are also places in the research that I'm undertaking around infrastructures of care, you know. So these are very complex social and cultural behaviors and needs that we need to kind of recognize within the contemporary context.
Becky Batagol:What do you mean when you say that toilets are a place of safety for women but dangerous for men? So
Niki Kalms:women would retreat to a toilet, you know, in the way that Kate spoke about in order to kind of take refuge. So it's a place of refuge to talk, to recalibrate, to tend to kind of bodily needs. And actually for men, it's a place of danger because often it's a place where men have sex. And so there's kind of a sense of being on guard within a public toilet. So they're very different in the ways that they might be used and the behaviors that take place within them.
Niki Kalms:Also, toilets are places where women access information around family and domestic violence and sexual violence services and materials. And one of the things that Laura and I talk about is that actually it's the sex segregation of that space that actually makes that function quite well. So these are... You know, that's not to say that that gender neutral facility can't work, but it is important to think about those sociocultural things that also happen within toilets. And I think this idea of refuge for women is is a critical one in lots of different ways.
Niki Kalms:And perhaps the fact that they're slightly different for men because of the ways that they experience pub... Violence in the public realm that we just need to understand a bit more about. And what does it mean if we're kind of moving towards a gender neutral facility?
Kate Seear:Yeah. And and hearing you talk about this, Nikki, makes me think that one thing that we really haven't acknowledged in our discussion to date, but which is, of course, incredibly important is also toilets as a safe space for people who are menstruating and experiencing menstrual conditions, reproductive concerns, being able to retreat to that space when, you know, you're not feeling well or you're bleeding heavily and so on are really key and and no doubt a very important part of how we should think about design. I want to just dig a little bit deeper into the question of safety because in your commentary, you do discuss the importance of safe spaces for women and gender diverse people. What are some of the key gender based issues when
Niki Kalms:it comes to safety, equity, and public spaces that those populations in particular might be facing? Okay. So I I think that many women and gender diverse people feel at risk and and quite vulnerable in public spaces more broadly. And toilets are really not different if they... Particularly if they're in public or semi public areas.
Niki Kalms:And so there are real consequences of that feeling of risk and vulnerability and perception of safety. So for women and gender diverse people, they may opt out of being in the public realm. They may shape their job choices around their experiences of safety in the public realm. They may choose to use different forms of public transport or not use public transport at all. We know that they will undertake particular forms of exercise and recreation because of the ways that they feel in public spaces.
Niki Kalms:And, also, we're increasingly aware that parents shape intergenerationally the ways that likely their their children, specifically young girls, are in in the public realm. So it's actually really quite complex. And it's often about the perception of risk. So there is a large disparity between how actually unsafe you might be in the public realm, but then that kind of feeling of being vulnerable. But the work that we do at the x y x lab doesn't like to differentiate because if you're feeling at risk and you're opting out of public space or you're not getting that bus and not taking that job, they're kind of real things for for that person.
Niki Kalms:So I think we've got to think about the experiences women and gender diverse people in the context of risk and in the context of the work that they do to keep themselves safe in the public realm. What we know about public spaces and places is there are kinda two components. So one is that gender based violence powerfully affects how women and girls and gender diverse people find their place in the world. So we know that there's a lot of increasing research about family and domestic violence. The work that I do in the x y x lab is really thinking about how that manifests in the...
Niki Kalms:In public spaces. But what we also know is that gender bias in the built environment also leads to places where women and gender diverse people and indeed people from lots of different intersectional backgrounds, so their race and ethnicity, their age, their indigeneity. We're not kind of designing places that are accommodating these needs, and so you feel like this place isn't designed for you. And that's a really key aspect of why people are not maybe in the public realm as much as they would be or why they're feeling unsafe in the public realm.
Becky Batagol:Nikki, can you give us an example of what you mean when
Niki Kalms:you say the built environment is not or is designed to exclude women and girls? So a couple of examples. A really minor example might mean that the handrail on the bus is too high or the seat doesn't accommodate me if I can't kind of, you know, get in and out of the seat if I have a a particular disability or I'm or I'm older. So we're not kind of thinking about diverse bodies. Another way that it might impact on minoritized, marginalized people, often women and gender diverse people, is that we might find that the whole train timetable is based around commuter travel, peaks at nine...
Niki Kalms:You know, before 9AM and after 5PM, and so my options are kind of diminished. So really thinking very carefully about the ways that gender is shaping decisions or even inadvertently shapes decisions is something we need to think very carefully about. And there is some really wonderful research around if we kind of twisted everything around. So it wasn't about commuter travel and we looked at carers' travel, what would that look like? And it's...
Niki Kalms:There's significant differences and things that we need
Kate Seear:to really think very carefully about. Just going back to Sean's proposal for a moment, Nikki, we've just heard Sean talk about the fact that there are a number of local councils that are proposing reforms that involve replacing male and female toilets with a series of individual, all gender or gender neutral cubicles. And I wonder what you think about a proposal like that.
Niki Kalms:Look. I think that that's a model that we've seen work quite successfully in Northern Europe. So, really, the Scandinavian countries generally have toilets like that. We have to remember that the Australian context is is quite different for a variety of reasons. What I think that model doesn't accommodate is women from culturally and religiously diverse backgrounds who require a sex segregated and private space because of the requirement to wash in private, to remove items of clothing such as hijabs, and the gender neutral facility, and especially a place where a man is urinated, is not a viable option for those women to use.
Niki Kalms:So there's still a kind of neutral facility even though, you know, that's a really good practice to have the hand basin in the cubicle as well. Other things that we need to think about are issues of entrapment, which is a huge issue particularly for gender diverse people. They don't want to feel like they're in an entrapping space. And so I guess that, you know, the cubicle, depending on its configuration, can do that as well.
Becky Batagol:Nikki, if you and Laura were to be granted your wish to radically redesign what our toilet spaces look like, what what would they look like?
Niki Kalms:Well, I think what would be the first principle is to engage with this process of participatory co design, which is what kind of drives the work that we do at the XYX Lab. So we use this across all of our projects, and the aim would be similar with the toilet project, which would be to surface the perspectives of a really wide range of diverse communities. And the aim is to think about that gap that we're currently talking about, which is what is inclusion in this space. So that would mean engaging with people who are trans and gender diverse as well as people from different racial and culturally diverse backgrounds, people of different abilities, children, older people, so that we can really start to think very carefully about the production of analysis that would inform policy regulations and briefings. So I think that a successful public bathroom infrastructure is really about the capacity to meet all of those needs.
Niki Kalms:And to understand, back to that point about the bathroom being a kind of sociocultural space that's much more than just having a wee, we need to think about all those other things as well. And one of the things that Laura and I talk about is the kind of current contemporary context where, you know, these are places where people might be getting water or if if we're thinking about housing instability. What does the kind of public bathroom and and semi public bathroom need to be right now? And I'd say it's a lot more than just these pragmatic amenities. We need to think more ambitiously about these spaces.
Kate Seear:Nikki, we've talked a bit about your work more broadly and
Niki Kalms:the work of the XYX lab, which
Kate Seear:is so important and interesting. And recently, congratulations because you've been awarded a major grant by the Australian Research Council, is about studying exactly these issues, inclusive public toilet design. What does this project involve, and what do you hope to find?
Niki Kalms:Well, the the project's kind of based on some big changes that we've seen in the last three decades. What we've seen is Australia has really moved away from a municipal oversight of public bathroom amenity. So So we've seen a real shift towards the public sector where toilets, public toilets, what we would call kind of public toilets, are sequestered in shopping centers and cafes and commercial spaces. So they're not actually truly accessible anymore. These bathrooms come with a fee.
Niki Kalms:It depends on... Your access depends on your economic status or your social class. And the project is kinda suggesting that we're now in a kind of very anti democratic space. So we're really interested in those public bathrooms that are on the street, in parks, and in communal open spaces. And, actually, many of those were built at a time in the sixties and seventies and eighties, and they're really in poor shape.
Niki Kalms:And these are the really unsafe places that none of us want to go anywhere near. They're going to require a lot of costly retrofitting. Many of them are decommissioned. And so we really need to start to think about what it means to reinvest in what we're describing in this project as infrastructures of care and really thinking about those broader sociocultural requirements that the public bathroom needs to now kind of address if we're to create equitable urban places. And I think this also sits in the context of some huge health challenges.
Niki Kalms:We've spoken a little bit about the ways that public spaces can delimit the ways that women and gender diverse people interact in the public realm. But also this research is underpinned by something. I mean, this is an extraordinary kind of term, but it's called the urinary leash. So this is where we now have research that suggests people are reducing their mobility because they can't access a public bathroom. So women suffering chronic dehydration because they don't drink while they're out in the public realm because they don't wanna have to try and find a bathroom while they're in transit.
Niki Kalms:Elderly people, disabled people modify their whole entire engagement with the public realm because they can't get... Be guaranteed access to a bathroom. And when we start to think about the rising incontinence, which affects one in three women, one in ten men, one in five children, plus a whole lot of other highly stigmatized issues, not not to mention just menstruation and all of those things that we've also talked about. We're looking at the value of architecture for creating these spaces that are place based, that are designed with local communities, and how we might really think about that infrastructure as a critical valuable asset in communities.
Kate Seear:That's amazing, Nikki. And I never thought that I could feel so excited about and enthused about the value of a a a bathroom, but I do after hearing you talk about that. And I also think about people experiencing homelessness and the the value of public spaces that are safe and well lit and clean and, you know, welcoming and and how these are issues that affect, as you say, affect us all and and make us feel valued and valuable. So it's amazing work.
Becky Batagol:Nikki, do you ever walk past a public toilet and go, that is it. That's what I wanna see.
Niki Kalms:Well, as part of the case study research that I've been doing for the ARC project, what I've done is I've gone back through all of the award winning architecturally designed toilets that have been produced in the last five years by great Australian architects. So there are lots of them. And so, yes, I do. And, you know, this research will look at how they find themselves in cities, but also in peri urban areas and in regional areas. And there are just some absolute ripper toilets.
Niki Kalms:So where should I go and pee? So if you're thinking about a kind of Victorian context, I would say that there are some terrific toilets in the city of Bendigo at Howard Place amenities. They were designed by Williams Bogue. We also know that Kirsten Thompson Architects, who we all love, amazing Melbourne architect, did the Joc Camini reserve amenities in the city of Bendigo, so that's another great one. So so why are they special?
Niki Kalms:Well, they have been designed in a place based way. So they're responding to the needs of the site, the communities. Some of the toilets on the list are actually amenities that are on freeways, so they're really quite specific in terms of safety, but they actually celebrate architecture. They're not just a kind of stainless steel urinal with no soap or or running water. They are actually valuable civic assets.
Niki Kalms:And as such, because we can see that they've been invested in, we actually respect them and they become places that imbue civic value and shape the ways that we might behave within them. So I think that's what makes them different is that they've been invested in and designed in a place based way.
Kate Seear:Well, Nikki, like many of our listeners, I think I'm gonna rush off to Google those best toilets and start heading to them and looking at them because I'm really enthusiastic about seeing what they look like. It's been wonderful to have you on to talk through these issues. I've learned so much. So thank you so much for joining Becky and I on the podcast. Thanks for having me.
Kate Seear:Thanks, Niki, and thanks, Doctor. Sean Mulchay, for this episode. Thanks also, of course, to my co host, associate professor Becky Batagol. You've been listening to Feminist Acts, a podcast series about law reform. If you've been interested in what you've heard today, as always, go to the show notes.
Kate Seear:You'll find plenty of resources there, including a link to our book, The Feminist Legislation Project. You can download the entire book for free, including Sean's proposal and Nikki's response. You can read all about that and a range of other law reform proposals, which are there ready to be implemented today.
Becky Batagol:This podcast is recorded on the land of the Boon Wurrung and Bunurrung people of the Kulin nations. We pay our respects to elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who are listening today. Today's episode asks who a public infrastructure is designed for and who it leaves out. That question has particular weight for this country. The World Bank lists Australia as having 100% access to clean water and effective sanitation.
Becky Batagol:But for many First Nations communities, that statistic does not reflect reality. Recent researchers documented Aboriginal girls missing out on days of school each month due to lack of functioning sanitation hardware, access to hygiene products for menstruation and the privacy needed to manage their periods with dignity. When we talk about design of public toilets and who gets to use them safely, we acknowledge that for Aboriginal and Strait Islander women and girls, these are not abstract questions.
Kate Seear:You've been listening to Feminist Acts. This podcast was produced by Miniature and funded by the Monash University
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