Fancy that, the Independent pointing out that single-sex toilets are important for girls. Mind you, it was more than six years ago.

Unesco is urging governments around the world to prioritise providing single-sex toilets in schools, warning as many as 1 in 10 girls in some countries are missing out on lessons because of their period.

Gee, I wonder why girls would not want to deal with menstruation in a toilet shared with boys.

“In 1990, the world committed to admitting equal numbers of boys and girls into primary school by 2005,” Audrey Azoulay, director-general of Unesco said. “Since then we have set ourselves a more ambitious set of gender equality targets with a deadline of 2030, but we must not forget that, despite considerable progress, one in three countries have yet to achieve the original goal.”

One “obstacle” to girls attending school was a lack of segregated toilets in schools, review director Manos Antoninis said, adding the agency found there was “little focus” on menstrual hygiene in schools in 21 low and middle income countries. “Improved sanitation to address adolescent girls’ concerns over privacy, particularly during menstruation, can influence their education decisions,” he said. “Single-sex toilets are desperately needed to overcome girls’ barriers to education.”

Yes but girls’ access to education doesn’t matter nearly as much as boys’ access to girls in the toilets.

In Bangladesh, 41 per cent of schoolgirls aged between 11 and 17 reported missing three days of school every month because of a lack of adequate sanitary care, according to the report.

Meanwhile, in rural areas of west African nations including Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, less than a fifth of schools had four or more of Unesco’s five recommended menstrual hygiene services. These include separate sex toilets with doors and locks, water and rubbish bins.

The issue was not confined to those at secondary school, Unesco said, and primary schools also needed to introduce better toilet facilities to not discourage female pupils.

But but but what about the trans girls? Surely they matter infinitely more than actual girls.