Perth Voice Interactive

BURLY, testosterone-sweating muscleheads are making the sauna at Beatty Park leisure centre an uncomfortable place for some women.

Voice reader Zoe says “some men will try and chat up women in there who are just trying to relax”.

“On the last two weekends I have wanted to use the … sauna but just don’t feel comfortable sitting in a sauna in my bathers with eight huge, muscled, tattooed men and no other women.

“Women are being subtly excluded because it’s too intimidating—seriously, these blokes are big and they stare.

“I pay for my membership and can’t use the steam rooms on weekends.

“People would say ‘yes you can, just go in there’. But it’s really not that simple. And as there are no women in there on Sundays anymore, I am not alone in feeling this way.”

She used to live in London and said it was common for such places to offer single-sex sessions. Other places around the world will divide sessions into mixed, male-only and female-only timeslots.

“It’s far more relaxed and enjoyable,” She says.

She wrote to Beatty Park management but it’s not budging.

Vincent CEO Len Kosova says several years ago single-sex sessions were trialled, “although there was little-to-no take up and several members complained about the trial”.

“Based on this experience a business decision was made to discontinue the initiative.”

Now that Beatty Park’s been upgraded, Zoe thinks it’s time to revisit single-sex sessions.

“The area is changing, there are more people using the centre.”

by DAVID BELL