Men do it standing up, so why can't women? Well, they can now - down dark alleyways, in shop doorways and (as I witnessed recently outside Embankment Station at five in the afternoon) in telephone booths. They can do it standing tall with their heads held high and their knees straight. The days when a lady had to dash to the nearest hardy perennial or squat among the ants could be numbered - all thanks to a funnel-shaped piece of waterproof paper which, according to its manufacturer, P-Mate, will allow women to urinate "without making any mess".
So far P-Mate's only public appearance in Britain has been at the Glastonbury Festival where, by the last day, the stench emanating from the Portakabins is horrific. In an attempt to curb such smells and the long queues, organisers this year premiered the "She-Pee". According to a spokesperson, it was a tremendous success: "Forty thousand P-Mates were gone by the third day and the feedback has been fantastic. Our comment books completely filled up and we received only three negative responses." The company behind P-Mate is a Dutch enterprise owned by a woman called Moon Zijp. In the past year, 586,000 P-Mates have been sold in their home market and in Belgium. They have also been on sale commercially for a month in Australia, where they cost $6.99 (£2.70) for a packet of six, but it's too early to tell how popular they are.
P-Mates are less expensive than running ordinary toilets: they take up less space and are biodegradable. The problem is, market penetration has not, thus far, been very successful - most women haven't even heard of them. And those who have, have reservations: one friend pointed out that the ritual of "going to the loo" with your female friend would be lost if urinals took off. Sharing a toilet cubicle is as much about gossip and booze-fuelled bonding as it is about saving time in the queue. "Besides," she remarked, "I'm not used to standing . . . Women have been squatting for centuries - it's in our genes."
The sight of a man urinating in public is familiar and unmistakable. Women make do with queuing for ridiculous periods of time, or squatting uncomfortably, or good old-fashioned techniques such as "holding it in". Public urination is a male speciality; women don't require open-air potty training. So unless it takes off as a chicks v dicks feminist statement, the P-Mate is likely to remain a novelty instrument for novelty occasions. Yet West Berkshire Council was so impressed by the way Glastonbury had persuaded women to do it standing up that it was said to be planning to use the She-Pee on its streets. A spokesperson denied this, however: "It's not something we've ever considered. It would be funny, though."
While the reaction stays so mooted, it seems highly unlikely that town centres will be prepared to showcase a tripod of urinals shielded by bare-bottomed females. Wokingham had been targeted as a location in which to test the She-Pee, but the council refused to entertain such suggestions: "We don't have a nightlife here . . . This is a market town."
Still, if P-Mate's latest product did take off and women and men stood side by side in urinary unison, would this redress some kind of imbalance in societal gender perception? Save women time? Provide them with an alternative to dirty toilet seats?
The jury is still out.
