Schools Urged To Install Gender-friendly Restrooms

By Wu Po-hsuan and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

Taipei public high schools have not properly implemented a gender-friendly restroom mandate seven years after its promulgation, a coalition of groups said yesterday, urging the Taipei City Government to act.

The Taiwan LGBTQ+ Hotline Association, the Taiwan Gender Equity Education Association and the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights were among the groups who jointly held a news conference at the National Taiwan University in Taipei.

The Taipei Department of Education in 2017 promulgated a pilot program to install gender-friendly restrooms — unisex, gender-neutral facilities — at the schools in its jurisdiction.

Schools urged to install gender-friendly restrooms

Photo: CNA

Forty-five high schools, or 61.6 percent, claim to have unisex restrooms, short of the goal of one gender-friendly restroom for every school set by the city government, the groups said.

Three out of 11 schools inspected last year by volunteer students claimed to have built unisex restrooms where none existed, they said.

The remaining eight schools had 30 designated gender-friendly restrooms, but only four met the definition of the term, which is being furnished with both sitting or squatting toilets and urinals, the groups said.

The remaining 26 unisex restrooms were reflagged as accessible toilets, inadvertently displacing students with disabilities from the only facility they could use, League for Persons with Disabilities member Wang Yu-ju (汪育儒) said.

Lines would form outside the unisex restroom as students had to use what little time they had between classes to relieve themselves, he said.

The few properly equipped unisex restrooms utilized less-than-ideal designs that offered little privacy, former children and youth representative Fong Yu-chieh (馮于倢) said, citing inadequate barriers between urinals.

Gender-friendly restrooms should be installed in municipal offices as well and related signage should be standardized, Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Lin Liang-jyun (林亮君) said.

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