Occupy The Toilet! Female Students In China Protest Gender Inequality By Occupying Men’s Bathrooms

By: EW News Desk Team   Date: 22 February 2012

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22 February 2012

A group of female college students in China are taking a unique spin of the Occupy movement spreading across the world, by protesting – both within and outside male’s bathrooms – what they perceive to be gender inequality in the country’s toilet offerings.

Li Maizi (an alias), a student in a Xi’an college, started the movement after she had been frustrated by the long wait taken to use a female bathroom while at a conference in Guangzhou; and began to plan to protest to call for the government to provide more toilet stalls for women.

Citing “potty parity” laws that presently exist in neighbouring Hong Kong and Taiwan, the protest group demanded “greater convenience for women and greater equality between the sexes”, especially as “women’s bathrooms usually have only half of the men’s lavatory capacity” in China.

According to the Wall Street Journal, laws In Hong Kong specifically require the ratio of male to female public toilet space to stand at 1:1.5. Likewise, at least 21 states and municipalities in the US have passed similar laws to the effect.

On Sunday, the group of protestors swarmed into the Yuexiu Public Park in Guangzhou city, before marching into the men’s bathroom to make their point across.

Apart from holding up placards and signs, the group also started queuing up for stalls in the men’s bathroom, while local males stood sheepishly.

Li strongly believes that the country should immediately introduce a new nation-wide legislation to dictate at least 1:2 bathroom stall construction ratio for men and women, and commission more non-gender specific bathrooms that cannot be refurbished, said Baidu Beat. She also intends to carry on more similar protests across the country, with her next stop being the capital city of Beijing next week.

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In response to the protest, a member of the Guangzhou political consultative committee told local media that the city are intending to increase the level of toilet parity from a ratio of 1:1 to 1:1.5.

Social media in China has also been set ablaze by the students’ movement. On Tuesday, the phrase “girls take over men’s bathroom” became the top trending topic on popular Chinese search engine Baidu, while Sina Weibo was also filled with comments on the matter.

See Photos Of The “Occupy Toilet” Movement in China (photo credit: shanghaiist):

photos credit: shanghaiist


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