With the National Construction Code 2025 preview, the Australian Building Codes Board has included a new ‘all‑gender’ toilet provision as a Deemed‑to‑Satisfy pathway in NCC 2025 that leaves fixture numbers intact on paper but allows a reduction in toilets reserved exclusively for women. This change appears technical, but it has clear implications for women’s access to safe, adequate facilities in everyday public buildings.
In its consultation materials, the ABCB has framed the proposal as “modernising and standardising the language” of the Code and as “a progressive step towards building a more inclusive and equitable society”, saying that “embracing diversity, and reflecting it in our built environment, will contribute to the well-being of all individuals in our community”. The NCC 2025 preview now incorporates an all‑gender sanitary facilities option for certain non‑residential buildings, under which total fixture numbers are unchanged – but part of the provision that was previously female‑only may be provided instead as all‑gender.
Women’s organisations, including ours, warned the Australian Building Codes Board in 2024 that this is exactly what would occur if it proceeded with the all‑gender sanitary facilities proposal. We explained how the draft changes would constructively reduce female‑only facilities and create design requirements that building custodians cannot implement predictably or lawfully. The NCC 2025 preview now confirms those warnings and exposes a broader governance problem: consultation processes that invite women’s evidence but do not meaningfully incorporate it into regulatory outcomes.
The ‘constructive reduction’ in female-only facilities
Under NCC 2022, sanitary facilities in offices, shops, schools and other non‑residential buildings were calculated by sex: a specified number of toilets for women, a specified number for men, plus some unisex accessible toilets. This was not perfect, but it did guarantee a minimum number of cubicles clearly reserved for women.
The NCC 2025 preview keeps that framework but adds a new Deemed‑to‑Satisfy (DTS) pathway allowing part of the required toilets to be designated as ‘all‑gender’ instead of female‑only or male‑only. So, where three toilets are required, a building may provide one female, one male and one all‑gender compartment; and where four or more toilets are required, up to half of the toilets may be all‑gender, with the remainder labelled female and male.
On the face of it, nothing is removed: total toilets still satisfy NCC tables. But the number of toilets reserved solely for women can decrease, because provision that previously had to be female‑only may now be provided as all‑gender within these substitution limits. For example, a shopping centre that currently has two women’s cubicles and two men’s cubicles might meet the new path by keeping one women’s, one men’s, and converting the remaining two to all‑gender, a configuration that appears neutral on a plan but leaves women with fewer guaranteed facilities.
This is ‘constructive reduction’: numerical compliance looks unchanged, but effective availability of toilets for women is diminished.
Why this reduces amenity for women
Our submission shows that when all‑gender toilets are added, demand does not shift away from women’s toilets; instead, all‑gender facilities become an additional shared space layered onto existing patterns.
Broadly this means that
- Males without a particular gender identity use both male and all‑gender toilets.
- Males who identify as female, non‑binary or another identity use male and all‑gender toilets and, often, women’s toilets.
- Women, whether or not we use identity labels, tend to avoid male toilets and unisex toilets and prefer female‑only toilets where provided for reasons of safety, privacy and dignity (some women will also use all‑gender toilets, but not as a straightforward substitute).
Taken together, these usage patterns mean that replacing female‑only cubicles with all‑gender cubicles only serves to increase the load on the remaining female toilets.
In the consultation material, sanitary bins and dispensers are required in toilets for females or gender diverse people and in all‑gender compartments, but not as a standard requirement in male toilets. Practitioner summaries of the NCC 2025 preview confirm that all‑gender compartments ‘must include a dispenser for sanitary products and a means for their disposal’, again without extending that obligation to ordinary male toilets. This approach implicitly assumes sex‑based needs, while at the same time encouraging some females who identify as male or non‑binary to use men’s toilets where those facilities will not necessarily be available.
Taken together, this shows how the regulatory structure still depends on sex in practice, even as the new all‑gender pathway reduces the number of clearly designated female‑only spaces and moves away from a straightforward alignment between users’ needs and the toilets that are required to meet them.
Historically, a lack of toilets for women limited our ability to move freely and participate in public life – the ‘urinary leash’. For more than a century, exclusion has been the socially accepted organising principle for female‑only toilets: men are excluded so that women can use facilities safely and with privacy and dignity. The NCC all‑gender pathway inverts that logic by treating “inclusion” as the organising principle, even in spaces where excluding males has always been the practical, necessary and lawful way to meet women’s needs. The all‑gender pathway risks a contemporary version of that constraint: queues, overcrowded female toilets, and no clear minimum standard for cubicles reserved for women, despite formal compliance with fixture counts.
Predictable risks now visible
When ABCB opened consultation on all‑gender sanitary facilities, women’s groups responded with detailed analysis. In July 2024 our submission identified three key risks:
- Constructive reduction of female‑only toilets if all‑gender facilities were allowed to satisfy part of the required provision.
- The impossibility of reliably predicting and planning for demand if design is framed around gender identity rather than sex.
- Confusion about whose needs sanitary bins and dispensers are intended to serve if female‑only spaces are reduced.
We noted that once sex‑based language is removed from Part F4, building custodians cannot reasonably anticipate how many people of which ‘type’ will use which facilities. We also explained that allowing all‑gender facilities to count towards required provision would reduce women’s access to toilets in practice, even where total fixture numbers stay the same.
The NCC 2025 preview and industry commentary now show that these concerns have been carried through into the final design. The all‑gender DTS option under F4D3 and F4D4 permits up to half of toilets in some buildings to be all‑gender, with no separate minimum for clearly designated female‑only cubicles. Outcomes we identified as foreseeable risks in 2024 now appear as accepted design choices.
Consultation that met process but failed substance
Formally, ABCB’s process appears sound. It published a public comment draft, opened an online consultation hub, and invited “industry and interested stakeholders” to comment on all‑gender sanitary facilities, stating that submissions would inform its next steps. Women’s organisations, including ours, engaged in good faith: we worked through the technical material, applied the Code’s own definitions, and provided detailed accounts of likely impacts on women’s access to toilets.
Substantively, however, the outcome aligns more closely with supportive industry and lobby proposals than with women’s submissions. This is a governance failure in substance. The formal elements of consultation were present, but the expertise and experience of women and girls – the group most affected by changes to female‑only toilets – did not materially shape the regulatory design. A code intended to protect health and amenity has been amended in a way that predictably reduces women’s amenity and complicates compliance, while those consequences are not transparently acknowledged.
Implications for ministers and regulators
If consultation is to be more than procedural, building ministers and regulators should revisit the all‑gender pathway in light of the evidence provided. Nothing in the NCC forces governments to choose this pathway; it is a policy choice whether and how they allow it in their jurisdictions. At a minimum, any optional all‑gender provision in the NCC should be expressly constrained so that it cannot reduce the minimum number of clearly identified female‑only toilets required in a building. Where usage patterns indicate higher demand from women, female provision should be increased, not diluted via re‑labelling.
State and territory governments also retain discretion in how they adopt NCC 2025 provisions and can require that sex‑based provision for female‑only toilets be preserved or strengthened in their jurisdictions. That will require structured engagement with women’s organisations, not only with industry representatives and interest-group lobbyists, as well as a clear recognition that women’s safety, privacy, dignity and amenity are core public‑interest considerations the Code must uphold.
If detailed warnings from women continue to be treated as peripheral, further unintended consequences will follow that were, in fact, foreseeable. The all‑gender sanitary facilities pathway is an opportunity for governments to show that women’s evidence is taken seriously and that technical codes will not be used to erode the female‑only spaces we require to participate in public life on equal terms with men.
