A MELBOURNE academic has studied the writing on the walls of women's toilets for a taxpayer-funded research project.

La Trobe University academic Jan Schapper visited almost 50 public toilets in and around Melbourne for her research.

She toured toilets in cafes, restaurants, hotels, bars, movie theatres, department stores, fast food outlets, railway stations and five-star hotels.

Dr Schapper is employed at La Trobe University and the paper was part of her work as an academic.

"I refer to it as my toilet paper," she told the Herald Sun yesterday.

"As academics, part of our role is to do research and to pick research topics that interest us."

La Trobe Uni receives about $250 million year from the Federal Government. The rest of its $600 million income comes from fees, HECS and other sources.

Dr Schapper said the paper - titled "The writing is on the wall: text(ure) of women's toilets in Australia" - contributed to social knowledge.

"Toilets are part of our lives and our organisations, and the signs on the wall are part of our experience of that space," she writes.

In her study, to be published in the international journal Gender, Place and Culture, Dr Schapper argues that women's toilets are "unique examples in the West of cultural and gendered practice".

She says they "offer rich material" about "gendered space". Her research is an analysis of the official and unofficial signs fixed to toilet walls, which she says are "sanctioned by the toilets' guardians".

The article starts by looking at the "symbolism of the excretory function in modern civilisation".

It offers detailed descriptions of the facilities and range of activities that take place within female toilets.

Dr Schapper writes: "Toilets are variously sites of crime as well as female-only space in which women can attend to their bodily needs and enjoy some social engagement."

The project was first conceived when Dr Schapper was at Monash University.

"The toilets had signs that were very controlling, and I was puzzling about whether they were racist, and I started to look at other toilets and the signs in them," she said.



Among the signs she looked at was one designed to show international students how to use the toilet.

Dr Schapper said a future area of research could include talking to cleaners about their experiences of toilets as a workplace.

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Originally published as Academic toilet paper opens doors