Legal action

 

Parents may want to bring legal action against a school or local council on behalf of a female pupil who has experienced harm. Two landmark legal victories in Scotland have demonstrated this (West Lothian and Scottish Borders Council).

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Harms to girls because of mixed-sex toilets

 

Girls are experiencing various forms of harm at school because schools have removed and replaced single-sex toilet provision:

 

🚩 Sexual harassment, assault, and rape

🚩 Period stigma and harassment

🚩 Physical intimidation and abuse

🚩 Medical harms

🚩 Negative impacts on girls from minority communities, religious beliefs

🚩 Educational impacts

🚩 Psychological and emotional distress

 

This harm is daily, it starts fresh every day, several times a day, deeply affecting the dignity, privacy, safety and well being of girls. 

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Sexual harassment, assault, and rape

 

The majority of peer-on-peer sexual harassment in schools involves boys targeting girls, communal spaces can make female pupils feel deeply unsafe.

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Mixed-sex toilets heighten the risk of peer-to-peer sexual harassment, violence and rape. Incidents of voyeurism—such as boys peering over or under cubicle partitions or sliding mobile phones into adjacent stalls—create environments where girls feel unsafe.

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A boy in an Essex school was arrested for raping a girl in mixed-sex toilets he was subsequently charged with seven sex offences at the school. 

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Period stigma and harassment

 

Mixed-sex toilets and toilets where the cubicles can be seen from the corridor exacerbate period stigma, with documented reports of both boys and teachers monitoring, questioning, or harassing girls about menstruation-related needs, severely compromising their privacy and dignity. Period embarrassment leads to some girls skipping school when they are on their period because they don't want to use unsuitable toilets.

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Girls have a fear of boys knowing they are on their period. They feel embarrassed unwrapping period products in a toilet due to the noise and the lack of acoustic privacy in unsuitable toilet provision exacerbates this. Girls worry about others noticing how long they have been in the cubicle.

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Bad behaviour from boys such as banging on doors whilst girls are in the cubicles asking them why they are taking so long and what they are doing, boys emptying the period bins, and using them to flood the toilets and boys ‘playing’ with used period products all horrify, intimidate and embarrass girls.

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Physical intimidation and abuse

 

The presence of boys in mixed-sex toilets leads to intimidation, including physical disruption like banging on cubicle doors while occupied. It can also lead to physical abuse of girls. A girl was left with a nasty head injury after a boy allegedly 'donkey kicked' a door in the mixed-sex toilets while trying to get into her cubicle to take a picture of her.
 

Medical harms

 

To avoid the anxiety and distress of using mixed-sex facilities, many girls resort to holding urine for the entire school day. There have been reports “confirmed by doctors, that there were girls who were not using the toilet in some schools and getting urinary tract infections because they didn’t want to share their toilets with boys”. In addition to (UTIs) girls are suffering chronic bladder pain. Girls are more likely to get UTIs than boys due to biology.

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Many girls stop drinking water or other liquids during the day to avoid needing the toilet. This can cause headaches, lethargy, and poor concentration in class due to dehydration.

 

Unhygienic seats in mixed-sex toilets due to boys urinating on them can cause problems for girls when changing period products. There are also reports of boys emptying period bins which is a health hazard.

 

When we feel unwell we often go to a toilet, first aiders are taught to look for people who felt unwell in the toilets because of this reason. Getting trapped behind a floor to ceiling door of a mixed sex cubicle can delay a child being detected and therefore delay them getting medical attention. Children with diabetes, asthma and epilepsy are at increased risk. Some children feel claustrophobic in floor to ceiling cubicles and worry about getting locked in which causes anxiety about using the toilet at school.

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Negative impacts on girls from minority communities, religious beliefs

 

Unsuitable toilet provision where you can see the cubicle from the corridor negatively impacts girls from a variety of different communities, backgrounds, religions and beliefs such as girls from Muslim and jewish faiths and girls from the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) communities. This can lead to discrimination. 

 

Older Muslim girls who may wear head coverings and need to adjust them cannot do this in front of boys. GRT communities have strict sex segregation and chaperoning for teenagers which cannot occur in mixed-sex toilets. Mixed-sex toilets may lead to GRT children being withdrawn from education.

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Educational impacts

 

The daily stress of navigating mixed-sex spaces infringes upon the well-being of female pupils, creating a barrier to their full comfort and participation in the school environment. 

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Rather than navigate the anxiety and stress of mixed-sex toilets, some menstruating girls choose to skip school entirely. Missing days every month directly impacts their academic achievement and long-term potential.

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Dehydration, physical pain from holding urine, and constant anxiety over bathroom trips undermine a pupil’s cognitive performance and ability to focus on lessons.

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Psychological and emotional distress

 

The psychological and emotional impacts of mixed-sex toilets on girls should not be underestimated. The loss of privacy and dignity inevitably felt in a mixed-sex toilet can cause some girls significant distress and anxiety, but the psychological impact on the other girls is equally important. The girls who seem to accept mixed-sex facilities as normal have been taught that they are not entitled to privacy and dignity. Their ability to assert their boundaries has been deliberately compromised by an ideology that calls boundaries ‘exclusion’ and mixed-sex toilets ‘inclusion’. This leaves them more vulnerable to other abuse, such as in a relationship, as they have learnt to ignore their own need for safety. 

 

For the girls who do feel distressed by mixed-sex facilities, the anxiety at school can be extremely detrimental, and is understandably particularly distressing when girls start their periods. The constant state of high anxiety about it can affect everything, from learning to friendships. Some girls have even reported leaving the school at lunchtime to use single-sex toilets in local shops, which is obviously a safeguarding issue schools should be reacting to. They are often pressured to ignore their instincts and accept that mixed-sex toilets are ‘normal’, which is gaslighting and has the same effect it would in other contexts, making her believe she's in the wrong. 

 

Mixed sex toilets are disrespectful of the boundaries of girls. We teach our children from a young age to understand the differences between males and females and to keep themselves private from the opposite sex. By installing mixed-sex toilets and toilets where the opposite sex can see them from the corridor it normalises the mixing of the sexes in private situations. This is a form of grooming. We know mixed-sex spaces and facilities are dangerous for women and girls. WRN has highlighted this in its Red Flag Campaign: Leisure Centres reports. 

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Unsuitable types of toilet provision

 

The toilets below are from schools in England and constitute unsuitable toilet provision. They fail to comply with legal requirements in the Regulations and are likely to constitute unlawful discrimination and harassment of girls under the Equality Act 2010.