Are women's only swim sessions in council pools no longer a thing ?

[habibihabibi]

Arrived back in the UK after 20 years living abroad.
Before I moved I'd swim regularly at women's only sessions ( London).
My local pool had day and evening slots. I went at least three times a week.
When I was barely a teen I was abused by a male swimming coach and rather than give up on the sport I loved , it felt so much safer to swim without men present.
I went often with a friend who reason was faith driven ( I taught her to swim ) .
Now I'm in Edinburgh and there is only one women's only sessions and it's on the other side of the city , once a week for an hour.
Is this a countrywide shift ?
If anything it feels like women need more of their own spaces and from what I have researched Scotland did have more sessions historically.

Almost 100 sex crimes including rape and assaults have been recorded at swimming pools and leisure centres in Scotland, figures reveal.
The Sunday Post’s It’s Time partners, the Women’s Rights Network (WRN) Scotland, received freedom of information (FOI) reports from police involving 91 of the country’s 340 swimming pools.
They revealed 51 incidents of voyeurism and 30 sexual offences against young girls, with 11 involving youngsters under the age of 13.
One rape was recorded, at Kirkcaldy Leisure Centre.
In addition, 25 sexual assaults and 21 other sexual offences were reported, and in total there were 81 female victims. All offences were committed between 2023 and 2025.

You what ? Its not just me with a problem with creeps in pools.
Do you really think everyone should tolerate this .

We don’t even have women only changing rooms let alone swimming sessions! So depressing, as a result I don’t go.

My local pool has one session a week for women but it's at 8pm which is too late for me!

I go to both mixed general swimming sessions and the one weekly adult women session. The women's session has quite a different vibe, much calmer and quieter and I enjoy the difference.

And nobody needs to be told to 'reframe their trauma' @Awkwardisfunny . Your empathy didn't really come across with that kind of comment.

That’s how I read it. Bloody hell! I thought the knobhead who did actually say reframe your trauma was a lone Wolf, but apparently there are more….

Just double checked ours and there are 2 adult women only , 2 adults men only, 1 women and girls and 1 men and boys and then general so basically every choice going spread throughout the week at various points (north east England)

FOI to local authorities has highlighted that although they describe them as women only, when you dig down into their policies, they're actually for anyone who identifies as a woman eg www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/list_of_council_funded_women_onl_83

Can we move away from dictating that no one is allowed to have an opinion unless their trauma matches or is worse than yours? These are community resources and they're finite so we need to be sensible with them.

We only have one leisure centre in a town.

I would be very angry if I had fewer swim choices because the times I needed were blocked out for just men.

We need to integrate. Is the OP also boycotting mixed buses and mixed trains, and mixed supermarkets. Is anyone advocating for women-only shopping hours or women-only sunbathing sessions at the beach.

So are you advocating to ban men from leisure centres? Or asking for men to be chaperoned everywhere? What is your point here?

Your OP feels goady now I think about it. Segregating swim times won't prevent any of what you just pasted there.

Is that what I said? Or did I talk about shifting focus to healing and point out facts that we need to integrate - we can't make policy for a minority when it comes to shared resources.

And it feels quite "emotional blackmail-y" to bring up a twenty-year old trauma to justify a current viewpoint on wanting segregated swim times.. but not segregated "literally anything else". How can anyone respond to that without people like you jumping down our throats?

My point is why women and girls here in Edinburgh don't get to choose to swim in women's only sessions like I had as a late teen /early 20s something in London .
I did not once mention banning men. As other posters have outlined , some parts of the UK also have mens only swimming .

The Carnegie Baths in Dunfermline had regular ladies' sessions when I was a girl. I'm not aware of any in Fife now.

Fife Council claims not to know...

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/list_ofcouncil_funded_women_only

My mum taught me to swim and took me to both mixed and ladies' sessions at first.

We stopped going to mixed sessions because it turned out that some boys thought it funny to duck little girls who were learning to swim.

Really??! I have never seen men-only swims! Whaaaat! Is that for religious reasons? Can't imagine why else. What on earth! Going backwards here. We made so much progress on equality and integration in this country. Why is there a men-only anything?? Not happy about that. And vice versa: don't agree with women-only either.

Jeez. This is one stop away from our old fave "you use a mixed bathroom at home".

Are you very angry at having fewer swim choices because the times you need are blocked out for just schoolchildren?

Have some empathy. Some women prefer a women-only swim session.
Some men might do too, and not only for religious reasons.
It's fine.

The council pools here in Liverpool have womens only sessions, which I sometimes go to. I actually prefer the mixed sessions because they are quieter (the women's sessions are very busy as there is only 1 per week) and the mixed sessions tend to have faster swimming and not lots of middle aged women standing around for a chat! One of the women's sessions I went to was so busy I could barely swim, and anything more than sedate breaststroke would feel a nuisance!! And I forgot to take my friend to chat with in the middle of the pool!!

Why do we 'need to integrate'?

Why do we 'need' to have any number of women who can say that one of their first experiences of sexual assault was as a child in the swimming pool?

Is it really emotional blackmail for somebody to disclose their reasons, only for you to tell her to get over it? She isn't the only person who experienced it - out of 32 girls on our school residential, 9 of us were sexually assaulted by a group of 11-12 year old boys in the pool within about 10 minutes. We were 9 and 10 years old. No point in saying anything to the teaching staff, who'd believe us if we told them? Could have been more, we didn't talk about it afterwards to find out if those boys had managed to get to every single little girl, but there were an awful lot of us standing at the side instead of having fun like the boys did for the rest of the session.

You might like to think that it's only a minority and therefore they need to 'focus on healing' (ie, get over it and shut up whining about wanting to be safe for males), but by that reasoning, as only a minority of men want to go swimming in the first place and they are a minority of pool users, we might as well go with the wishes of the majority female customer base and only provide facilities for them full stop. And the males will just have to start their healing journey of being banned from all swimming pools forever.

You don't get to tell women and girls that they are only allowed to go swimming on condition they make access to their bodies, both visually and physically, available to males. That's not your call to make.

Locally our council run pool gas a modesty swim once a week. No idea who attends but they only reopened recently and already someone has filmed a teenager getting changed in the mixed sex changing area.

No women only sessions in my local council pool, but plenty people do dress modestly (men and women) cause there's a large muslim community here.

Council facilities have to run on a cost effective basis, and I don't think blocking out time for women is cost effective - if it was, they'd still do it.

I think there are plenty private pools that will have women only sessions - Arlington Baths in Glasgow springs to mind. They also do naturist sessions! Private venues can afford to cater to specific groups. With council you get what you get. Even if they did women in the pool, would they ban all male staff from entering the pool area - I don't think ours would have enough lifeguards if they did that! And they'd have to close the leisure pool too...unless you only allowed mums and their daughters. It's not very practical.

Our city council has their leisure centres run by the “everyone active “chain ( they run 230 centres across the country)and they do women’s only sessions ( allow under 8 boys in) - I think they also still have sessions where the windows are fully covered to allow all women to attend . Our university owned pool also runs women only sessions.

Ahahahahaaa the chatting in the pool!! Yesss - why don't they empower the staff to challenge this ffs - you're paying to swim. It's not a fucking social! Move them along and two strikes and you're banned for two weeks. No consequences in this country anymore.

Well, we do when there are finite resources available. And finite time available for swimming. Someone has to make budget decisions with taxpayer money and every citizen is entitled to a voice on how it's spent and what access to services is available.

There's an argument for segregating children due to reduced capacity for understanding / reporting etc, as you described, but unless we're forcing men to be chaperoned at all times - risk to women is always present. Everywhere and at all times.

I vote for mixed public services. And yes, I am entitled to my vote.

I'm pro having some women only sessions, but also pro your idea of a temporary ban for stopping and chatting in the pool. Yellow card for the first offence, red for the second, 3 session ban.

One thing that has changed, gradually over the past 30 years really, and then more suddenly in the past 15 is how leisure centres are funded.

The old model where I live was heavy subsidy and the sale of cheap 'casual swimming' tickets. So it was easier to say the pool is closed to men right now, tickets for women only. People expected to turn up and swim at the sessions available to them.

The model has now moved to less (or ideally very little to no) council subsidy, so the bread and butter income now comes from memberships (usually combined swim/gym although you can also get a swim only at mine). Members tend to expect access when it suits them in return for their membership, not awkward timings and restrictions.

This puts women only sessions in a difficult position- put them at peak times before or after work, you might put off potential members or have members leave, jeopardising centre income- margins are often thin anyway. Put them at non-peak times, noon on a Wednesday, or 9pm on a Thursday and they might be poorly attended and appear unwanted.

Even harder when you account for the fact that the early evening will often be kids swimming lessons, already eating into peak time. Swimming lessons are reliably lucrative though.

The exception is where large numbers of users come from religions that demand segregation for modesty's sake. Member demand is likely to be sufficient to make separate male and female sessions viable. Whether that is a good thing or whether it brings up its own questions (if you're a woman at a mixed session are you immodest?) probably depends on your pov.

Maybe a very cold observation, but it would be my view on what has changed.