Unisex plans lead to more toilet equality

The battle of the sexes is set to get more equal with the introduction of more unisex toilets in the capital by year's end. It is not known if people will line up to use them, or men will lower the seat.

In the latest campaign to improve public toilets, 190 toilets in shopping malls, stations and hospitals will be equipped with a unisex bathroom, Wang Qingwen, a media officer from the Beijing Municipal Commission of City Administration and Environment confirmed on Sunday.

These toilets will meet the requirements of breast-feeding mothers, the elderly and disabled people, the commission said.

So far, about one quarter of the city's 5,993 public toilets have unisex bathrooms.　

The government also plans to include the building of unisex bathrooms with facilities for babies and disabled people to the standards a public toilet must meet in the future.

Guo Jia, 29, who has a 6-month-old son, said breast-feeding mothers are really in need of such bathrooms, to help with privacy.

"It's really embarrassing to do this in a lady's toilet," she said, adding that it can take a long time, and public toilets can be noisy.

University student Xiong Jing, who hit the headlines in February with an "occupy toilet movement" to campaign for more cubicles for women in public toilets, approved of the move.

"Unisex toilets will also help transgender people, who often struggle to figure out which toilet they should go into," said Xiong.