Holding Your Pee at Work: What a Study of 3,062 Women Found

Nurses, teachers, retail and factory workers, and anyone in back-to-back meetings know the habit: hold it until there’s a break. Here is what one large study found about women who do that most of the time.

The study

Researchers surveyed 3,062 US women working full time about their restroom habits and bladder symptoms.¹ 11% limited restroom use at work most or all of the time.¹

The main reason was a busy schedule; few blamed their employer directly.¹ Women who limited use were also less satisfied with how clean and private their work restrooms were.¹

How their habits differed

Habit	Women who limit restroom use	Other women
Put it off when busy	85%1	50%1
Wait until they can’t hold any longer	49%1	16%1
Hold on until they get home	64%1	17%1
Hover over the seat away from home	48%1	26%1

And their symptoms

Women who limited restroom use more often reported urgency and leaking in the past month, and more often peed fewer than seven times a day.¹

• Monthly leaks: 57% vs 49%.¹
• Urgency: 22% vs 16%.¹

The limits: this was a one-time survey, so it can’t show that holding on causes these problems; women with bladder trouble might also arrange their days differently.¹ The authors call for studies to test whether changing the habit helps.¹

A follow-up analysis of 12,583 comments from women about restrooms at work, school and in public found a mix of personal, practical and situational reasons for holding on.²

What helps

1. Go when you need to, not only when it’s convenient, and build short breaks into long shifts or meeting blocks.
2. Sit all the way down. Hovering is common, but it can stop your bladder emptying fully; see hovering over public toilets.
3. Don’t cut water to avoid breaks; see avoiding water before exercise.
4. Know your rights. In the US, workplace safety rules require employers to let workers use the toilet when they need to, without unreasonable restrictions.³

If urgency rules your day, see why you have to pee so often and bladder training.

Try: “I work 12-hour shifts and usually hold it until my break. Now I get sudden urges and leak a little. Could my habits be part of this, and what should I change first?”

Laugh, Sneeze, Jump covers this in Chapter 1, “Crossed Legs and Dark Leggings,” in a section called “The Bathroom Map,” and in Chapter 7, “Key in the Door,” in a section called “Sit Down, Stay a While.” Its Three-Day Read logs every trip and urge through a working day, so a habit of holding on shows up on paper. See the book.