Projo Politics Blog

The House leadership has, after 84 years, supplied female House members with that most basic of necessities: a bathroom.

The first woman to join the state House of Representatives was Isabelle Ahearn O’Neill, elected in 1922. In the 2006 elections, the number of women in the House rose by 4, to 15 from 11, out of a total 75 House members.

That isn’t the all-time high — there were 24 women in the 100-member House before the 2002 legislative downsizing and redistricting. Still, female lawmakers celebrated their gender’s gains last fall, and Speaker Pro Tempore Charlene M. Lima, D-Cranston, wrote to House Speaker William J. Murphy, D-West Warwick, formally requesting the bathroom’s addition this session.

And two weeks ago, during a vacation week for lawmakers, contractors installed said bathroom in an area behind the House chamber that was previously a locker room, next to the men’s bathroom.

“This should have been done years ago, when you think about it,” Rep. Joanne M. Giannini, D-Providence, who heads the Rhode Island Caucus of Women Legislators, said last week. “But it’s great that they did it now.”

The path to the men’s bathroom does not require members to exit the members-only area. The women of the House, on the other hand, had to venture outside and through a waiting “gauntlet” — as Rep. Carol A. Mumford, R-Scituate, put it — of lobbyists, who are not allowed in the chamber during session. Some even follow the female representatives into the public bathroom to get a moment of their attention — although only female lobbyists tried this tactic, Mumford said.

The women’s bathroom contains but a single toilet, and it’s much smaller than the men’s bathroom, which contains three stalls and four urinals, as well as a window and, inexplicably, an empty shopping cart. But the trappings — marble floor and a heavy oak door — are equally grand. (State historic preservation standards require them to be.)

Constructing the bathroom cost $15,811 in all, according to the legislative business office — $10,815 for Legacy, a Warren-based construction company, to demolish the locker room, repair the walls, and buy and install an oak door, marble floor, vanity, counter and mirror; and $4,996 for Scituate-based Barlow Plumbing to buy and install a toilet and sink.

Early last week, a computer-printed paper sign taped to the door proclaimed “Women Members Only.” By Friday, it had been replaced with a permanent metal nameplate bearing the same words. (The red-leather-covered swinging door to the men’s bathroom still says simply, “For Members Only.” House spokesman Larry Berman said it would be changed soon.)

Female state senators — who would have to travel a longer distance to the public bathroom, which is on the House end of the building — have had their own bathroom since 2001, when the Senate converted part of its locker room for the purpose. (The lockers are from the days before most lawmakers had offices in the building. Most now do, and each chamber also provides a coat rack to use in lieu of the lockers.)

The House bathroom arrives just in time for the season of long House calendars — the sessions began to stretch into the two-hour range last week, as representatives began to take up, on the floor, bills that have been voted out of committee. As the House breezes through bills, it’s essential that members who leave the floor can get back quickly so as not to miss many votes — but Giannini said it’s on these busy evenings that a queue sometimes forms in the second-floor bathroom because of the sheer number of lobbyists and staff in the building.

While Giannini said she won’t miss the run-ins with lobbyists and other members of the public — she said she has occasionally encountered people “washing up” in the bathroom, and gestured to one armpit to demonstrate — the bathroom’s primary value, she said, is that it “lets the women members know they’re appreciated.”

--By Elizabeth Gudrais, Katherine Gregg and Steve Peoples
Journal State House Bureau

---