3x as many public toilets for men as for women during Pride Amsterdam

Questions are being raised about the low number of public toilets that were available for women during Amsterdam’s Pride Parade. There were almost three times as many public toilets for men as there were for women. 

Long queues for women to use public toilets at Pride Amsterdam

According to the city of Amsterdam, the organisers of Pride and the city installed a combined total of 377 public toilets around the Prinsengracht and access routes this year for the Canal Parade, the annual highlight of Pride Amsterdam. 210 of these were seated toilets, while 147 were urinal blocks for men with four stations each, and 20 were accessible toilets.

This means that in total there were 588 toilets for men, compared to 210 seated toilets for women - almost three times more. On Saturday, the lack of toilets for women could be seen clearly with the long lines of women waiting to relieve themselves.

PvdA and D66 members on the Amsterdam city council have submitted written questions to city officials seeking clarification on the issue after receiving reports of women standing in long queues and having to pay expensive prices to use toilets in cafes or restaurants. “It’s not only incredibly frustrating when there are too few free restroom facilities, but it also highlights a structural inequality,” Lian Heinhuis, parliamentary leader of PvdA, told Het Parool.

Toilet inequality a longstanding issue at Dutch events

The municipality claims that the toilets it installed at access routes to Prinsengracht consisted of 80 percent sit-down toilets and 20 percent urinals. Pride organisers were responsible for the toilets on and around Prinsengracht itself, so the distribution fell to them.

As any woman going to any Dutch event or festival will know, the struggle to find a public toilet has been a problem for years. The parties urge the city to learn from this and want to know how it plans to ensure there are enough public toilets for women during future major events, such as World Pride, which is being held in the Dutch capital next year.