Why Are Lines for Women’s Toilets in Japan So Long? Blame The Patriarchy

Nearly half of women in Japan say they have to wait in excruciatingly long lines to use the restroom. Is that discrimination?

Lines for women’s public restrooms in Japan can be excruciating. They bothered one Japanese woman so much that she went on a quest to figure out why. Her research is renewing a debate over what constitutes Restroom Equality.

According to Asahi Shimbun, 60-year-old paralegal Momose Manami first noticed the phenomenon when traveling back to a concert in Kurashiki (Okayama Prefecture) to Matsue (Shimane Prefecture) in 2022. For two and a half years after, whenever she went to a public facility, she’d count the available restrooms for each gender, including both private rooms and urinals for men. (This was likely based on in-building maps showing how many facilities each restroom has.)

After counting 706 facilities, she discovered that, while most locations generally devoted the same amount of physical space to men’s and women’s restrooms, men had more actual facilities.

For example, the JR Hachioji Station in Tokyo has six private stalls for women. But it has seven private stalls and 10 urinals for men — meaning there are 2.8 times more options for men than women.