This year in the 2020 Legislature, state Rep. Calvin Say introduced the equal speed of access to toilets bill. In more than 20 U.S .states, this is known as the “Potty Parity bill”; necessary, because public restrooms follow a standard plumbing code layout that has not been updated in 50 years and in states like Hawaii where this legislation has not been enacted, women can wait more than two to three times as long as men to use the restrooms.

Whether at Aloha Stadium or at a graduation held at University of Hawaii, it’s not unusual to see men go in and out fairly fast while the women’s line of young women, mothers and elderly grandmothers snakes around the building. In this, as in most inconveniences, the people of Hawaii acquiesce — “shigata ga nai,”they say, meaning it can’t be helped.

In other places, people are not so willing to accept such a painful inconvenience. Last year while visiting the British Museum, I saw a man walking his wife into the men’s room directly to an empty bathroom stall. He reasoned it was better to suffer slight embarrassment than to have his wife endure the agony of waiting in the long line for the ladies room outside and risk having an accident that could ruin their day.

Why should men care about this? Because they have wives and sisters and mothers and grandmothers and girlfriends — and they are aware that the problem is not just discomfort, but can cause real health issues for women, particularly in the area of urinary tract infections, and complications with pregnancy. This is why the first such bills were introduced in 1987 in California by a male legislator who wanted to do something so that his wife did not have to wait 30 minutes in line to go to the bathroom. It passed in 1989. Similar legislation has been passed from Wisconsin to Tennessee.

Because traditional bathroom layouts were designed for men, at a time when there were fewer women in the workplace, they assume that the number of bathroom stalls are approximately equal — when in fact, women need twice the number of stalls to be equal in the same space. Nobody has wanted to change this in states like Hawaii because it involves spending extra money to do retrofits, and since no one seems to be complaining, why bother?

When similar legislation was introduced in the U.S. Congress in 2010, it died in committee and people made jokes about it.

In Hawaii this is no laughing matter. Hawaii has now increased the number of tourists to the point where we have 15,000 extra people per day on Oahu. Unfortunately, the number of public restrooms has declined, making things doubly uncomfortable for all women, and sanitation in overwhelmed facilities more difficult.

Men and women alike should support Calvin Say’s effort. When women are made to feel uncomfortable, it is bad for men, too.

Mike Markrich is owner of Kailua-based Markrich Research and a freelance writer.