Harvard’s workout hours for female students have drawn national attention, but other colleges have made similar moves
Harvard University quietly started offering women-only gym hours early this semester. But since the news broke several weeks ago, it has prompted an onslaught of media attention. The flash point: A handful of Muslim women had requested the change.
“Harvard Gym Tests Muslim-Women-Only Hours,” a recent MSNBC online headline read. And Fox News weighed in with, “Harvard Sets Women-Only Hours for Gym, Complying With Muslim Students’ Request.”
Harvard’s move, however, is not unique. In recent years, women at several colleges across the country have requested women-only workout times. Some of those women have been motivated by their religions — whether Islam, Judaism, or Christianity. Others are just plain fed up with having to play with the guys. And in many of those cases, their institutions have agreed to make special accommodations for them.
“Women, for obvious reasons, may not be comfortable in compromising situations in front of men,” says Ahmed M. Rehab, media-relations director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Providing women-only workout times is “really a gender accommodation,” he says, “not a faith accommodation.”
At Harvard a group of female Muslim students had approached their housemaster this year to see if they could have women-only hours in their house gym.
Administrators looked into their options and in February began to open the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center exclusively to women six hours a week. The gym, which is for all students, not just those in a particular house, operates more than 100 hours a week. According to administrators, it is one of the least used gyms on the campus.
Judith H. Kidd, associate dean for student life and activities at Harvard College, who approved the decision, says she viewed the situation as “an issue of accommodating a request from a small group of students with a special need,” and not specifically as an issue of religion or gender.
Beyond religion
Richard G. Wettan, assistant vice president for athletics at Queens College of the City University of New York, was faced with a similar decision several years ago. Some women at his college had asked for the institution to open its pool for women-only swimming one hour a week. As at Harvard, the request was religiously motivated, but in this case, the women were Orthodox Jews.
Mr. Wettan says he was reluctant to meet a request that could be seen as favoring one religious group. But other women, including some who were Muslim and others who did not have religious motivations, added their requests for separate time. So Mr. Wettan decided to give women an exclusive hour — and to also set aside an hour just for men. There have been no complaints, he says.
Wheaton College, a Christian institution, in Wheaton, Ill., also offers gender-segregated fitness opportunities. Jeannine B. Clinton, a graduate student who also went to Wheaton as an undergraduate, got the idea of bringing a Zumba class, a combination of dance and fitness, to the college, which only recently allowed its students to dance at all. The class was not originally restricted to women, but participating women asked Ms. Clinton if it could be. The students were having fun and indicated they would feel “complete freedom” dancing at the conservative college if the class were a women-only setting, Ms. Clinton says.
When a group of female students at St. John’s College in Santa Fe approached Brendan L. O’Neill last year, he was happy to meet their request for separate gym time. The women’s concern, in this case, was that male students were “too aggressive and physical” on the basketball court. They wanted a time to play only with other women.
Mr. O’Neill, the college’s athletics and outdoor program coordinator, set aside time for women’s athletics on Wednesday nights, but it wasn’t popular and won’t be done this year. Even so, there was no criticism of the women-only time, and men on the campus were supportive. If students wanted it, Mr. O’Neill says, he would bring it back.
Too Much Accommodation?
A similar arrangement at Kalamazoo College, however, has drawn complaints from men who believe the accommodation is unfair. Stephanie M. Anderson came up with the idea of having a special time for “Women in the Weight Room” in 2005, when she was a senior. Unlike Harvard, Kalamazoo has only one gym. Although an athlete and former personal trainer, Ms. Anderson felt uncomfortable working out alongside men at the college. She thought women, especially those with less experience lifting weights, would be more comfortable in a separate environment. So Kalamazoo’s weight room opens early on Sundays for women, and also has women-only time for an hour and a half on Tuesday evenings. The program has continued since Ms. Anderson graduated and usually attracts 15 or so women to each session.
Sarah B. Westfall, the college’s dean of students, comes to exercise during the women-only hours. While Ms. Westfall has no qualms about working out with men, she points to another issue: the equipment. The machines at the gym don’t have pins to change the amount of weight being lifted, she says. Instead, weights must be added and removed by hand. This can be an ordeal, she says, when men and women are both using the equipment. But since many of the women use similar amounts of weight, it is less of an issue when only women are present.
Ms. Westfall notes that women-only workout time raises questions of equity.
“Is it fair? It probably isn’t,” Ms. Westfall says. “But I don’t know that we have a better option right now.” Although Kalamazoo’s program began several years ago, sometimes men still wander in to use the facility during the dedicated time for women. They usually just aren’t aware of the program, and are polite when turned away, says Hannah A. Masuga, a junior who now leads the program. Yet there are occasionally men who make rude comments, and once two men removed weights from the room during the women’s time and exercised in the hallway.
Even so, Ms. Masuga says, the college has been supportive of the program. She has even been approached by men who feel uncomfortable in the weight room and want to discuss having a similar time for themselves, though Ms. Masuga hasn’t had time to explore that idea.
The women-only time is a comfort to women who want to learn how to bench-press using just the bar, and to women who can lift a lot of weight and don’t want to be made fun of by guys, Ms. Masuga says. “Each woman has her own reasons,” she says.
http://chronicle.com Section: Students Volume 54, Issue 28, Page A19
