University of Pisa: from 2022 the bathrooms will be “gender free”
The University of Pisa has always been very attentive to gender issues and the fight against discrimination, in 2007 he had ntroduced the career alias, that is, the possibility of putting a name other than the personal name in the booklet. Now comes the news that from June 2022 the bathrooms of this university will be genderless, i.e. not divided between bathrooms for men and women. The project had already been in the pipeline for a while but was postponed due to the pandemic: “Had it not been for the long Covid parenthesis, which postponed everything by a year, the operation would already be fully operational today “, confirms Professor Arturo Marzano, Rector’s delegate for the activities of Gender Studies and Equal Opportunities. In the meantime, a group of students has upholstered the bathrooms with some flyers in support of the initiative that they would like to see immediately. the sheet reads: “This is a neutral bathroom, are the bathrooms divided by gender in your house?”; It’s still: “Dividing bathrooms for men and women is gender-based violence”. To identify genderless bathrooms, the best method is being studied, there are those who propose to remove all gender labels and leave the toilet symbol and those who believe that it is better to introduce the neutral gender label. Parallel to the genderfree toilets in the University toilets are present the tampon-boxes where it is possible to leave a sanitary pad at the disposal of other women who need it. a small gesture of solidarity that according to the students is a step towards gender violence.