At the Kentucky Statehouse, every bathroom break for a female lawmaker requires calculation. With only two stalls available near the House and Senate chambers, 41 women in the 138-member Legislature must decide whether to risk missing a vote or debate—or wait their turn.
Their male colleagues face no such dilemma. There are multiple men’s restrooms on the third floor, complete with speakers broadcasting the chamber’s proceedings so they don’t miss a moment. In contrast, when a floor session runs long, female lawmakers rely on the generosity of House Speaker David Osborne, who offers up his single-stall office bathroom—often with a line out the door.
“You get the message very quickly: This place was not really built for us,” said Rep. Lisa Willner, a Louisville Democrat. Photos of past lawmakers lining her office walls confirm the point: nearly all men.
Potty parity may sound trivial, but its implications are not. As Kathryn Anthony, an architecture professor emerita at the University of Illinois, notes, “If you have an environment that is designed for half the population but forgets about the other half, you have a group of disenfranchised people.”
Relief may be on the way. A $300 million renovation of the 155-year-old Capitol aims to expand women’s restroom access by 2028. Kentucky’s move comes decades after other states began confronting the legacy of male-centered design in government buildings.
Tennessee’s Capitol, for instance, opened in 1859 with one men-only restroom—flushed by rainwater and infamously dubbed “a stench in the nostrils of decency.” Today, its women’s restroom is in a cramped hallway under a staircase.
In New Mexico, Rep. Liz Thomson missed votes in 2013 because there was no women’s bathroom in the House lounge. Maryland only added a gender-neutral restroom and nursing room in 2019. And it wasn’t until 2011 that women lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives got a bathroom near the chamber.
Some female lawmakers have responded with creativity—and poetry. Colorado’s first Black woman legislator, Arie Taylor, helped add a bathroom in 1987. Her colleagues installed a plaque to commemorate her success, calling the room “the Taylor Chamber Pot.”
Still, Rep. Willner says the physical structure of Kentucky’s Capitol is a constant reminder of who it wasn’t built for. “This building was not designed for me,” she said. “Well, guess what? I’m here.”
