ENTANGLED PUBLIC ESSENTIALS : Female Perspectives on Public Toilets in Portugal and How to Propel Change

Women living in more affluent urban contexts have poor access to sanitary infrastructures owing to a lack of female public toilets. Existing toilets are often poorly maintained, and their design does not suit women’s daily needs. In this essay I use a mixed‐methods approach that combines the analysis of documents and secondary sources with the use of ethnographic methodologies. My goal is to understand not only how public toilets in Portugal are designed and maintained, but also to make sense of how women perceive public toilets in urban settings and whether these toilets are designed to fulfil the needs of the population they are supposed to serve.