Let’s talk about gyms, locker rooms and bathrooms, shall we? Discrimination follows women into the most intimate spaces of public life. Women like Reps. Patsy Mink and Edith Green, who were forging paths in government and drafting legislation to equalize gender equality, found blockades even here.

            In the early 1960s, only a handful of women held congressional seats, no more than a dozen or so at a time. For the most part, they had all the privileges of congressmen, except for one thing: they were locked out of the congressional swimming pool and men’s gym.

            The sign on the locker room door said “Members Only,” but it really meant men only. And it wasn’t only exercise women were excluded from — it was the opportunity to discuss issues, form alliances and make deals with their colleagues.

            In 1965, a so-called “Women’s Health Facility” was constructed for congresswomen, but it was a poor imitation of the congressional men’s gym. Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-CO) described the facility as “six hair dryers and a ping-pong table.”*

Storming the castle

            One day in 1967, three women — Reps. Mink (D-HI), Charlotte Reid (R-IL) and Catherine May (R-WA) — decided to test the unspoken men-only gym rule. Attempting to enter, they were turned away by the gym manager, who explained that the men in the pool liked to swim naked.

            “So,” answered Mink, “Is it too much for the democratic process to ask you to put your pants on?”^**

            The women’s protest gained them access to the pool — but only when the men didn’t care to swim, which was early in the morning. Just as in other venues — like competitive sports — congresswomen were relegated to the use of facilities on men’s terms.

            And the disparity didn’t end in the 1960s. Far from it.

Can we get a bathroom here?

            Let’s look at how women had to fight for facilities in congressional office buildings.***

            1962. A space in the Sam Rayburn Office Building is dedicated as a reading room for female members. It includes the only women’s restroom in the building. The men’s bathroom is right outside the House floor.

            1965. Congress spends $500,000 on a men’s gym with a basketball court, a pool and a locker room. A separate women’s health facility is created for the 13 congresswomen in office. Women protest that the facility is the size of a broom closet and has outdated equipment. The fitness equipment includes vibrating belts, wooden rowing machines and wooden bars along the walls (along with those hair dryers).  

            1967. Reps. Mink, Reid and May stage their “Members Only” protest outside the men’s gym.

            1971. Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY) integrates the pool. When the men protest they like to swim naked — again! — she shrugs and says, “Well, then you’re going to swim naked. I’m coming in to go swimming.”****

            1985. The men’s gym goes co-ed after Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and two other congresswomen protest women’s exclusion from the facility. But the facility doesn’t include a women’s locker room. Congresswomen have to dress in a changing room across the building, walk in their exercise clothing through halls open to their colleagues, the public and the press to the gym, and then return to the locker room in their sweaty exercise clothes and wet swimsuits.

            1993. A women’s restroom is constructed just off the Senate floor. Previously, women had to trek to the women’s lounge for a restroom, losing valuable time on the floor.

            2011: Female members of the House get a women’s bathroom off the House floor. Finally! 

            2013. The women’s bathrooms are doubled in size to accommodate the growing number of women in Congress. By this time there are 20 female senators and 80 female House members.

            Today. The women’s gym remains subpar and sparsely used. And there’s still no women’s locker room outside the congressional gym.

                                                ______________________________

* Juliet Linderman, “A look at women’s advances over the years in Congress,” AP News (Nov. 4, 2017).

** “Members Only,” post on the History, Art & Archives of the U.S. House of Representatives blog, Whereas: Stories from the People’s House, March 20, 2017.

*** Sources: House and Senate historians, Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics. Excerpted from Linderman, “A look at women’s advances.”

**** Oral history interview with Liz Abzug, daughter of Rep. Bella Abzug.  Office of the Historian U.S. House of Representatives Washington, D.C. (Nov. 20, 2018),  p. 33.