Women are always waiting in line to pee. But why should we?

OPINION: I was recently at a wedding which had unisex toilets. In the line next to me, a man stood with his son. "Having to line up, eh," I said casually, by way of conversation.

"You know, I think if men had to queue more often the architects would build more toilets," the man remarked.

I looked at him. "YES," I said, possibly a little too emphatically for his comfort. "Yes."

For as long as I can remember, I've been lining up to use the loo. At weddings, festivals, gigs, sports; any large public event with gender-specific toilets, and the women's line will snake around the block. "What do you ladies DO in there," you'll sometimes hear Dwayne from accounts chuckle. "You take FOREVER."

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Contrary to commonly held belief, we are not gushing over the guy at the bar or swapping lipstick tips (though this sometimes happens, too.) What we're mostly doing is what we came to do; pee.

At Auckland Round the Bays last year, the line for the women's toilets in Britomart looped around for about 30 metres. There was no queue for the mens. I stood in line for around ten minutes, watching as man after man sauntered in and out. With just minutes until the race's start, I commit the ultimate act of transgression; ducking out of the line, I raced into the men's loos and helped myself to a cubicle.

And you know what? I'm not even sorry.

How is it fair that women are expected to line up for a public restroom, while men are not? It's tiring and boring, not just for that woman but for anyone who is with her. We assume that's just how it is, or that those exotic female creatures take longer to fluff up their skirts or powder their eyebrows, or that taking a whiz while sitting down must be more time-consuming.

Dwayne! We don't even powder our eyebrows. We are literally just using the toilet, but due to our anatomy, the fact we menstruate and the fact no-one has designed anything better yet, we do so in a cubicle. There are never enough. Men, on the other hand, can simply line up in a urinal. As Soraya Chemaly writes for Time, the answer is not necessarily in figuring out ways of helping women to "pee like a man" (eg. She-wee) but better conceptualising spaces for women's bodies.

I have raised this with friends. "What, so you think they were purposefully designed to be sexist?" one guy asked. No, I do not think they were purposefully designed that way, much as I don't think boys were designed to like the colour blue, or girls to covet princesses. I think whoever is designing them has never had women in mind.

And it hasn't always been this way. Bathroom segregation only began in Victorian times, with the idea that women's virtue had to be protected, and that their real place was at home with the children. Before that, we all peed in the same place.

With increasing recognition of LGBT rights, unisex restrooms in New Zealand are becoming more common. Auckland University of Technology's all-gender toilets pave a way for a future where your biological sex doesn't dictate where you go loo, or how long you have to wait.

Imagine that - a time where everyone's bodies are recognised as equal. I almost want to pee, I'm so excited.

Michelle Duff is a journalist, and a weekly columnist for Stuff.