"I can't run because I wet myself": how female runners can defy the urinary leash

In the second half of the nineteenth century, women’s rights activists drew attention to the woeful lack of public toilets for women, and the negative effect this had on some women’s ability to spend much time at all in public space. Much later, the phrase “the urinary leash” was coined to describe this sexist lack of provision and how it kept women tied to the home (see footnote for the derivation of this term).¹ Over the last 150 years, public toilet provision for women in some countries has somewhat improved - but it’s still a live issue across the globe. Across the African continent, one in ten girls do not attend school when menstruating because of a dearth of female toilets. In India, where 48% of the population lack access to safe, sanitary toilet facilities, women and girls are particularly restricted because of the threat posed by men who might rape and murder them while they’re going to the toilet outdoors.

In Britain, nearly 60% of public toilets have closed over the last decade, mainly because of local authority budget cuts, but also because of coronavirus transmission worries during the pandemic. Women are the chief victims of this decimation of public loos. This is because, among other reasons, women find it harder than men to urinate discreetly outdoors, for both anatomical and clothing-related reasons; going to the toilet can be messy for women who are menstruating, miscarrying, or who are post-partum; women are often caring for children or elderly people, who are more likely to have an urgent need for the toilet; and women are vulnerable to male sexual attacks when going to the toilet out in the open. The effects of lack of public toilet provision are wide-ranging and serious. A woman reported being sexually assaulted while urinating in a bush in Paris, after budget cuts had led to the closure of public toilets and the removal of lighting in that area. Women are more likely to suffer from agoraphobia than men, and some link their condition to anxiety about needing the toilet outside the house. Women are less able to benefit from everything that goes with a day spent outside the home, such as the opportunity to see friends and family, to breathe fresh air and feel the sun against the skin, to wander and get lost in thought, to see new sights and meet new people and feel new sensations and enjoy new pleasures and encounter new possibilities.