City of Seattle to sponsor women-only swims

Article here. Excerpt:

'In March, the city of Seattle will begin offering women-only swims at four city pools in order to serve women who cannot swim in a co-ed environment for cultural, personal or religious reasons.

For the past decade, private groups have rented the city’s pools to offer single-sex swims, drawing mostly Muslim women and some Orthodox Jews, along with some who chose the swims for personal reasons (“Women-only swims draw crowds but face challenges,” Real Change, June 29, 2011). The windows are covered during the swims, which are staffed by female lifeguards.

As grants and other funding for the swims began to dry up, demand for the swims continued to grow, and city officials wanted to find a way to sustain them. First, they had to change non-discrimination policies that made single-sex programs difficult to sustain.'