Recently, there has been increasing talk of “bathroom bills”; that is, legislation proposing to regulate the use of public restroom facilities by persons who do not identify with the sex assigned to them at birth (National Conference 2017). This debate often raises the equally perplexing question of why gender segregated bathrooms are even necessary, if not the law, in the first place. To explain this phenomenon, sociologist Harvey Molotch uses the example of the segregation of public restrooms to define social structure and demonstrate its effect on gender equality throughout society.
Molotch uses the example of public restrooms to argue that, while required to be “equal”, social structures cause these facilities to be anything but. Molotch conducts his analysis on the macro level, generalizing his findings to the whole of society. He states that although it is mandatory for an equal amount of square footage to be designated for both men’s and women’s restrooms, that alone does not consider the many differences between the genders
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Molotch not only presents the obvious solution (or “liberal” solution) of making women’s restrooms larger by way of determining the “square feet to gender ratios”, but also offers an “alternate solution” (“conservative” solution) to maximize efficiency (1988). This alternate solution calls for women to change their behavior, for example, “squatting over a common trough” rather than altering the structure of restrooms in society (Molotch 1988). Chemaly provides no suggestions of her own, but rather comments on different laws and legislation and their effectiveness. She states single stalled, unisex restrooms are most efficient, both in space and time (Chemaly 2015). While they differ in how they might address this issue, both authors agree over the fact that women are being asked to make unfair sacrifices in the name of