- Campus
- 09/12/2024
TU/e opts for inclusive sanitary facilities
In Neuron, they’re already there: gender-neutral restrooms. Only the restrooms in the basement of the building are still male/female. Gemini will also go partly gender-neutral after the renovation. It’s part of a new Real Estate policy to make sanitary facilities on campus more inclusive. And that goes beyond mixed restrooms.
Everyone must be able to identify with the sanitary facilities, that’s the premise of Real Estate’s new policy in this area. For years, students and staff have been proactively asking for this through Compass, says Rik van der Velden, construction advisor at Real Estate. “That led to gender-neutral restrooms being added to the renovation of Neuron and soon Gemini will have them as well.”
Anyone entering Neuron will see a toilet bowl on the signage there instead of the typical male/female icons. “Like this we are referring to the function of the restroom, rather than to who uses it,” Van der Velden says. On the first and second floor of the building, there are only gender-neutral restrooms. In the basement, however, you can still use a specific ladies’ or men’s room.
One third
The new policy states that there should be an equal division between men’s, women’s, and gender-neutral restrooms in every building. The fact that there are proportionately many more gender-neutral restrooms in Neuron, according to Van der Velden, is because it wasn’t clear at the time of renovation how many men and women would use the building. “To deal with great uncertainty in that area, it’s convenient to have a high percentage of gender-neutral restrooms, because everyone’s welcome there.” Real Estate hasn’t yet evaluated the response to the gender-neutral restrooms in the building. This may still be done, but not before they’re introduced in Gemini as well. “So far we haven’t received any negative reports from Neuron though. If it stays that way, evaluating may not even be necessary.”
Men are currently overrepresented at TU/e. “It used to be much worse,” Van der Velden recalls. “When I started studying here in 1979, there were zero female researchers and teachers at the Department of the Built Environment. In the 1950s and 1960s, engineers were almost all males. So whom do you make the restrooms for?” As a result, there are far more restrooms for men than for women on campus, especially in older buildings.
Urinals
In some places, the large number of men’s restrooms does create opportunities. There are often many urinals in those restroom blocks. By placing those behind a closed door within the block, the rest of the restrooms can be made gender-neutral. This is one way of making some of the restrooms available to everyone without having to go through a whole renovation. “We basically have a policy where you renovate buildings every 30 years. That’s the time to make adjustments. For that reason, the introduction of wheelchair-accessible restrooms took decades. We didn’t want that to happen again, so now we’re looking into getting the inclusive sanitary facilities done more quickly.” In some places, departments are already taking matters into their own hands. Case in point is Mathematics and Computer Science, in Metaforum. “There was also a demand for gender-neutral restroom there, so they determined themselves which ladies’ and men’s rooms could be converted to gender-neutral ones.”
Wheelchair
But, Van der Velden says, it’s actually the wheelchair-accessible restrooms that have the greatest potential. “Those are actually there for everyone, not just wheelchair users. It’s actually better for the latter as well if these restrooms are used more, because then they’re cleaned more often.” To make it extra clear that those restrooms are also gender-neutral and everyone is welcome there, there will be toilet bowl icons on the door near the wheelchair icons, just like in Neuron.
Those restrooms also tackle other inclusion issues. For example, they accommodate larger people – including pregnant women – and there’s a faucet inside the restroom stall. The latter is necessary for what the policy document calls “intimate hygiene treatments,” such as cleaning a menstrual cup.
People who cannot use wheelchair-accessible restrooms, however, are those who want to squat to do their business. There are already two squat toilets (latrines) in Metaforum and the basement of Atlas. Van der Velden doesn’t know whether those are used frequently. “You also need good signage and we haven’t gotten around to that yet. When the squat toilet was placed in Metaforum in 2012, there was an article about it in Cursor. It said: signage is not there yet, but it’s coming soon. But it’s still not there. So I’ll repeat it here: they’re coming soon.”
Icons
The icons have also been overhauled for the new policy. Gender-neutral restrooms are indicated by a toilet bowl. There was some discussion about that, says Van der Velden. “Someone suggested a hand-washing icon, but that doesn’t show my need. If I’m looking for a restroom, I’m not looking for a faucet.” New icons were created for urinals and squat restrooms, and the wheelchair icon was updated. “The original ones were perceived by wheelchair users themselves as very static and inactive, so now the icon shows someone in a wheelchair making a movement.”
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