Should We Flush the Men’s Corporate Restroom Ban? 

By Amy Joyce
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 28, 2007; Page F06

Every weekday at around 12:30 p.m., Robert Mooney leaves his office, hops into his 1998 Nissan Sentra and drives to the nearby McDonalds to empty his bursting bladder. It’s not some sort of odd ritual in which Mooney is engaged, though: Mooney works for Wells Fargo, one of the many U.S. companies that have banned male employees from using company rest rooms.

The ban on men’s rest rooms stems back to the early 1990s, when sexual harassment law was broadened to include a concept known as the “hostile work environment.” That meant that any workplace that fostered a “culture of harassment” could be sued by employees who felt uncomfortable in their work environment.

Sometime in early 2001, several female employees at Fortune 500 companies reported on company surveys that they felt “uncomfortable seeing men exit employee rest rooms.”

“Just knowing (male employees) are behind a single, thin wall with their pants down is enough to make me feel violated,” wrote one female employee in an impassioned screed.

“Men should not be exposing themselves in a public building,” complained a female middle manager. “Even if that exposure occurs in an ostensibly private area. Since (the exposure) is being done on company property, rules of decency must apply equally in all quarters of the building.”

The displeasure soon spread to colleges. Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, walked out mid-day when she witnessed a male colleage adjusting his pants after using a rest room.

Hopkins later said if she hadn’t left, “I would’ve either blacked out or thrown up.”

Five other female university professors reached by the Washington Post also said they were deeply offended by the male use of rest rooms.

As complaints mounted and lawsuits were threatened, several top universities released studies showing a marked decline in female employee morale when the subject of men’s rest rooms was brought up. Acting preventatively, many companies and universities boarded up men’s rest rooms and places signs on the doors with directions to rest rooms at nearby fast food restaurants, motels, and pool halls.

Domestic violence experts and human relations experts soon lobbied to have the men’s room space turned into “Harassment Awareness Centers,” which gave female employees a “safe haven” away from the rough-and-tumble male culture that pervades most U.S. companies.

The Washington Post - which instituted a ban on men’s rest rooms in 2005 - has such a center and the majority of female employees claim is has been a “mental health boon” for them to use the center’s services.

“After a long day of dealing with primal, angry male editors, it’s great to be able to have a place to sip on a Diet Coke and file complaints about the way I’ve been treated,” says one female reporter who wished to remain anonymous. In fact, The Post has reported the satisfaction level of female employees has “risen considerably” since a Harrassment Awareness Center replaced the third floor men’s rest room.

“Whatever it takes to make a less hostile workplace we’ll do,” said Post editor Ben Bradlee, who is recovering from bladder surgery at Sibley Hospital. “No one wants the women of the Post to feel uncomfortable.”

Men fighting back

Now that male employees have been denied rest room use, they’re starting to speak up, albeit in hushed tones.

“I know it’s not manly to complain, but I think it’s really unfair,” Mooney says. “I’ve already ruined several pairs of Dockers, not to mention really expensive shoes.”

Men’s rights activist Glenn Sacks says the issue of men being denied company access to rest room is “small potatoes” compared to “other pressing issues, such as paternity fraud and false rape accusations and debunking that Super Bowl Sunday domestic violence myth.”

Sacks, however, did say he felt that women’s concern about men’s rest rooms as “much ado about nothing” and “very silly.”

But National Organization of Women president Kim Gandy says men being inconvenienced is only fair, since the U.S. culture has been historically unfair to women.

“One of the reasons women had to struggle so long to win the vote—and why we continue to fight for full equality—is the trivializing of women and our concerns,” Gandy says. “It smacks of sexism when the concerns of women are demeaned as ‘silly.’”

What are your thoughts on the men’s restroom ban? Should men get their own rest rooms again? OR should Congress take action illegalizing all men’s rest rooms, as California legislator Shiela Kuehl has proposed?

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