Williamsburg Women Demand More Separate Swimming Hours At Local City Pool

NEW YORK (VINnews) — A group of Chasidic women from Williamsburg have demanded that the city of New York cut back the amount of hours that men are allowed to swim at a public pool in the neighborhood in order to accommodate the needs of orthodox women. Jewish religious practice requires women not to bathe together with men.

Acting on the request of the local women, Community Board 1’s full board passed a motion demanding that the Parks Department set aside an additional three hours a week for female-only swimmers at the Metropolitan Recreation Center, because the current time slots are so jam-packed that one Williamsburg woman said she no longer allows her aging mother to use it for fear that she’ll drown.

“My mom — who is hitting 90-years-old, thank G-d — she’s a Holocaust survivor and she has been in the Metropolitan pool for many many years, keeping her health and keeping her beauty,” said Esther Weiss at the civic meeting. “But now, due to the fact that they cut the women’s swim, she can no longer come because she’s in danger of drowning with other people bumping and shoving her — we do not allow her to come.”

The city-owned pool and gym currently reserves the pool for women for an hour on Monday morning from 10-11 am, two hours on Wednesday from 9-11 am, and two hours for women and girls on Sunday afternoon.

The northern Brooklyn civic panel passed a motion put forward by its Women’s Issues committee to add an extra hour on Monday starting at 9 am and a two-hour slot from 9-11 am on Friday, with 22 board members voting in favor, four against, and eight abstaining.

The city has accommodated gender-segregated swimming times for decades in order to accommodate Williamsburg’s large Chasidic community. The St. John’s Recreation Center Pool in Crown Heights — another neighborhood with a large Chasidic community — also has one two-hour slot for women swimming.

In 2016, The Parks Department briefly abolished the female-only hours after an anonymous complaint prompted a review by the city’s Human Rights Commission.

The complainant claimed that gender-segregated swimming violates the city’s human rights law, which forbids gender discrimination in public buildings. However bureaucrats persuaded the authorities to cut back the women’s hours at the Williamsburg facility and allow hours for women at the Crown Heights facility which originally catered only to men, according to a New York Times report.

New Yorkers can still use all city-owned single-sex facilities that most closely align with their gender identity, according to a 2016 decree by Mayor Bill de Blasio.

However one board member and LGBTQ advocate slammed the policy — which has previously also been condemned by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the New York Times Editorial Board — because it doesn’t account for Brooklynites that don’t identify with the gender binary.

“This is not a progressive policy,” said Thomas Burrows, a member of the LGBTQ political club the Lambda Independent Democrats. “Gender-segregated public areas such as locker rooms and rest rooms pose a significant hurdle. By definition these spaces exclude people who do not identify with either gender or have experienced trauma in such spaces.”

But the head of the Women’s Issue committee argued that the gendered swimming time is for women of various backgrounds who feel more comfortable without men in the pool.

“We’re a community that has a huge population of Jewish, Muslim, and older people who really feel that they are too modest to be able to swim,” said Jan Peterson.

A spokeswoman for the Parks Department said the agency does not plan to extend the current hours.

“Currently we have no plans to further expand women’s only swimming at any of our centers,” said Charisse Hill in an emailed statement.