‘This is a right for these women’: Female-only pool hours spark debate

A POPULAR US public pool has become a battleground for national debate when it imposed restrictions on who could use its facilities.

A PUBLIC pool that maintains female-only hours so that Hasidic Jewish women can swim with no men present has sparked debate in the US.

For several hours a week, the Metropolitan Pool on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn bars men from entering, allowing local Orthodox Jewish women and girls to swim while maintaining their modesty.

The popular recreational centre in New York City’s thriving neighbourhood, just a few blocks from a predominantly Orthodox Jewish community, has kept women-only pool hours since the 1990s. But the practice only came to the attention of the wider public recently after complaints to the city’s Commission on Human Rights.

Commission spokesman Seth Hoy said they received an anonymous complaint “a few months back” that the indoor pool — one of NYC’s oldest — might be violating the city’s human rights law, which bans gender discrimination in public accommodations.

Jewish law forbids women to bathe in front of men and, according to New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a politician who represents the Orthodox Jewish district in Brooklyn, many Hasidic women were “very distraught” after learning the female-only pool hours might be discontinued.

“I think the concept of reasonable accommodation applies here in a big way,” Mr Hikind told news.com.au. “We all talk about human rights and this is a right for these women, not just Jewish women but any women have right to be part of this. It’s a matter of being culturally sensitive, respecting the differences we have.”

Mr Hikind said he is amazed the issue had become international news, saying there were locations across the country that have separate hours for Muslim women to accommodate their beliefs.

“It’s so simple, going swimming, but in this community there are a lot of things that they [Jewish women] don’t do that you and I do in terms of entertainment and so forth, so having the opportunity to go to the swimming pool is a big deal.”

The Metropolitan Pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn that maintains female-only hours. Picture: Rachelle Blidner

Critics argue that the accommodation to a particular religious group violates the constitutional separation of church and state. The New York Times proclaimed in a recent article that the rule carries the “odour of religious intrusion.”

But those who have defended the single-sex hours say it allows women whose community separates the sexes a rare chance to exercise. “Why deprive them?” Mr Hikind said. “Really, it hasn’t taken away from anyone.”

“The pool is open from 7am to 7am,” a local woman, who asked not to be named, told theNew York Post. “You can’t tell me that the men don’t have enough hours in the day to swim, that they have to interfere with these women?”

The Brooklyn pool’s women-only hours may be unusual, but they are not unique. Seattle, Washington is home to several municipal pools that bar men from entering during certain hours and St Louis Park, a city in Minnesota offers both male only and female only swim sessions. Public pools in a number of Stockholm suburbs have been offering women only access since the late ‘90s.

Many public pools in Sweden recently began offering gender-segregated hours to accommodate the country’s growing Muslim population — a move which has sparked plenty of debate and has been criticised by the government.

Sweden’s Democracy Minister Alice Bah Kuhnke slammed the initiative last month, telling SVT: “To claim in the name of religion that you have the right that different parts of society — for example swimming pools, buses and trains — should adapt to your right to believe in what you wish, that is taking things too far.”

The NYC Commission on Human Rights and the Parks Department are currently reviewing the policies for the Williamsburg pool, a spokesperson confirmed to news.com.au. Mr Hikind said he feels confident the single-sex hours would continue.

A woman leaves the Metropolitan Pool in the Williamsburg neighbourhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Picture: Rachelle Blidner