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Canada’s own National Building Code is much less generous, but still requires any “mercantile” business to retain a roughly two-to-one ratio: One restroom each for every 150 women and 300 men. Although, as critics note, even these ratios can leave women fighting over scarce facilities — particularly if men have the benefit of a bank of urinals.

At least in the U.S., the new codes are working well, said Robert Brubaker with the American Restroom Association, adding that in only a few years he has seen a precipitous drop in complaints about washroom waiting times.

“The problem is,” he said, “you’ve got a significant amount of older buildings, and you don’t have to go back all that far to where the ratio was 50/50.”

For women, even securing basic 50/50 “potty parity” — still a surefire recipe for lineups — was a struggle. For decades, builders followed the assumption that public spaces, such as convention centres and sporting arenas, would be mostly male-dominated, and they planned accordingly.

As a result, from the 1960s through to the 1990s, a rising generation of female lawyers, politicians and doctors often found they inhabited a world where they had nowhere to pee. Famously, the first female U.S. senators were forced to use public washrooms.

Indeed, this is still the case in the emerging markets of India and China, where existing facilities are not equipped to cope with new generations of independent, urban women. In the 18 million-person city of Mumbai, India, for instance, the city has zero public washrooms for women, forcing females to bribe attendants at male facilities.