If some men menstruate too, why are there no sanitary bins in men’s toilets? This question was at the heart of a paper presented recently to the University’s Social Inclusion Committee by student officers.

University of Warwick policy supports people’s right to use gendered facilities in line with their gender identity. However, given that people of all genders may menstruate (including some trans men, transmasculine and non-binary people, as well as some intersex people of all genders), restricting the placement of sanitary bins to women’s and gender-neutral toilets forces some people who identify as men to use gender-neutral facilities.

Indeed, despite the University’s commitment to “be recognised as best in class in [their] approach to diversity and social inclusion”, Warwick Provost, Christine Ennew, recently deferred a proposal to extend the provision of sanitary bins to all toilet facilities on campus. Just days prior, however, the Provost had released a public statement in response to the University’s new ranking in the Stonewall Equality Index, stating that Warwick “will still have significant work to do to embed our commitment to creating a genuinely inclusive culture and environment on campus.” If installing sanitary bins in all toilet facilities is not an integral part of building a trans-inclusive university, what is?

An Equality Impact Assessment (https://tinyurl.com/uux4vla) for the policy of restricting sanitary bins to women’s and gender-neutral toilet facilities has found that there is a negative impact on five out of the eight protected groups, meaning that this university is currently failing its duty of care to provide adequate facilities for trans students in single-sex spaces. To make matters worse, gender-neutral toilets are not yet widely available across campus.

Warwick can no longer claim to be ignorant to the negative impacts of their policy restricting sanitary bins to women’s and gender-neutral toilets. We now call upon them to live up to their public pronouncements on trans-inclusion by demanding a firm commitment to providing sanitary bins in all campus toilets as soon as possible.

Signed by:
SU Liberation Officers
SU Full-Time Student Officers