A quick question- March 26, 2008
Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs , trackbackI will continue the depression posts tomorrow.
You may have heard in the news that one of the Harvard gyms has set aside 6 hours a week for "Women only" exercise. This was requested by some (note SOME) Muslim women who were uncomfortable exercising when a male COULD be present. One woman described how she couldn’t lay on a mat because a man was present and it is against the religion for her to do that.
This is "my" gym. The one I trek all 1 minute to exercise at. When I first saw the "women only" hours, I was horrified. I am not thrilled with the idea that men are "checking out" my body, but I also doubt that many are. I got over co-ed exercise sometime in high school. However, this is a religious issue.
So now I am not sure. Is it FAIR to set aside hours for women to accommodate certain religions? On one hand, I want to say a big fat NO. Why should someone else’s religion restrict someone else? Or is this harmless and reasonable to allow a tolerance for the religion?
Discuss. I haven’t figured out the answer myself.
Comments»
No opinion really, just two thoughts come to mind. Firstly, if one group is accomodated, what is the criteria for denying another request? How can you accomodate one and not another? Second, if the “men” are bothersome, they knew it was coed when they joined, why wouldn’t they choose a women’s only gym? Granted, these are few and far between, but ??? Just my 2 cents
My thoughts are the same as Emmy’s…this particular issue wouldn’t really bother me in and of itself as being a woman, I wouldn’t be affected by the change…but then, the question becomes where do you draw the line and if you really do have an issue with a mixed gender gym, there are alternatives…
Julie
The devil, as always, is in the details.
One exception, and then it becomes a slippery slope.
What you’ve left out is that this is an on-campus (university owned) gym, that this arrangement is only on a trial basis and that the six women who requested it had backing from a major womens group on campus.
If this were a ‘retail’ gym, not a college campus run facility, I would be inclined to agree with you. Given the circumstances however, I think the university is between a rock and a hard place and is handling the situation in a reasonable fashion.
I think I’m with Eman here. Particularly since the papers reported that the 6 hrs/week were decidedly off-peak. Of course, I’d want to see an analysis of the usage during those hours, both before and after, and whatnot if I were running it as a for-profit business, but as a campus facility, it has to satisfy different questions. Such as, what is the RIGHT thing to do here?
I’m curious to see how it goes.
when we lived in Forest Hills, Queens it was a very religious Jewish neighborhood. Our local Y had “women’s only” swim time, as well as men’s only swim time. Kids, of course, were allowed in women’s time (not men’s). In the context of the neighborhood and that it was a “membership” gym, I wasn’t bothered by it per se. Often when joining a membership organization there are rules to abide by. But if I were joining a commercial gym, I would feel differently about it.