Gender, toilets, and the planning gap: A United Nations framework analysis of Canadian municipal parks policies

Gender and toilets are intimately connected. According to the United Nations (UN), access to sanitation, inclusive of toilets, within public spaces is a human right, and tied to the Sustainable Development Goals to achieve gender equality. A framework was developed to assess the provision of toilets in public spaces and includes five criteria: availability; accessibility; affordability; quality and safety; and acceptability, privacy and dignity. The framework links access to sanitation/public toilets and gendered rights. Canada lacks good quality public toilets in most places, including public parks, and there is no research on how Canadian cities consider the needs of women and transgender and gender‐diverse people for public toilets in their parks and recreation master plans. Therefore, we undertook a content analysis of parks and recreation master plans of Canadian municipalities using the UN framework. We did so to understand if decision makers consider gendered access to sanitation in public parks, and whether cities are meeting their human rights obligation on toilets as determined by the UN. Our results found there is a planning gap around gendered access to public toilets in planning policies and many municipalities are not meeting their human rights obligations to access to sanitation and gender equality .