In an effort to provide more options for women to relieve themselves at events, the Dutch city of Den Bosch is set to trial two types of female urinals at the kick-off of the carnival season on November 11.
If you’ve been to a festival in the Netherlands, you know the struggle of finding a toilet, especially as a woman. Men can usually find a public urinal easily enough, while women are stuck waiting in long queues to use the mobile toilets that have been provided, if there are any at all.
Luckily, the municipality of Den Bosch sympathises with this plight and will test two types of female urinals during the 2024 carnival celebrations. One is called the Lapee - a three-person fluorescent pink urinal that was invented in Denmark. With this option, the head of the person using the urinal can be seen as they squat, and it has no doors.
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The other type of urinal available is the MadamePee, which is a mobile toilet unit that has swing doors that can be locked. The toilet does not have a seat and still requires the person using it to squat. Both urinal types will be free to use.
To determine which urinal is best for women and will be used the most, mobile toilet rental company Rima Rental Group will take note of which type is used more often during the carnival. This option will then be the version that the company invests in for future events.
According to the company owner Rick Lamers, the Lapee is not a very common choice in the Netherlands. It has previously been used in a few Dutch events, one such in Amsterdam. “At first I thought: nobody does that, because you just sit there in the open,” he told Omroep Brabant, but as the drinks started flowing more women would make use of the Lapee. “The later it got, the more drunk people were walking around. I think that makes the embarrassment a bit less.”
As the MadamePee has a door with a lock, Lamers believes it is more likely that women will make use of this one as it is safer and has more privacy.
The number of people wanting to make use of the water closet or WC is only part of the problem. “As a woman, you often sit down comfortably on a normal toilet and some even take their phone with them,” claimed Lamers.
When urinals are used, the waiting time is considerably shorter. “If six women use a normal toilet within 10 minutes, 36 women can use this version.”
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