Against women-only gyms

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There are many understandable reasons why women go, or want to go, to women-only gyms.

“The presence of men could lead to self-consciousness or intimidation — especially in heavy weightlifting areas,” said women-only personal training business owners Diana Johnson and Felicia Oreb in a 2025 New York Post article. “Many women feel more comfortable working out in an environment where they are free from unwanted attention,” they explained.

When UK-based The Women’s Gym surveyed members, 80% of women using those women-only gyms said they have taken better care of themselves over the past year. Such gyms give women “permission to learn without feeling watched. Permission to start small without feeling silly. Permission to take up space — literally and emotionally,” according to an article about the data. The primary reason women joined The Women’s Gym, per its survey, was “comfort” (cited by 76% of members). Safety and harassment concerns were cited by 23% of members, and religious or cultural reasons were cited by 22%.

As I’ve written dozens of times throughout the posts in Body Type, whatever makes people more likely to exercise is fine with me. If a women-only space is the difference between starting an exercise routine and not, I say go for it. I can also understand that for women who have been filmed, touched, or assaulted by men, a women-only gym could be a safer space. I’m glad for their existence in these cases, and in specific others — maybe women want to join women-only gyms to more easily find friendship with other women, for instance.

That “comfort” is the reason cited by the majority of women in that dataset, though, is what gives me pause. Not because I don’t want women to be comfortable, of course, but because I wonder if women like me — who do not have religious or cultural concerns and who have not encountered the aforementioned hideous behavior or crimes by men — are so preoccupied with having an emotionally seamless experience in fitness spaces that they’re potentially keeping themselves from another crucial one, in my view: pushing past the discomfort of the unfamiliar and intimidating, and in turn becoming bolder in any such space for the rest of your life.

Let me be clear: I don’t mean that women should accept the discomfort or danger of men leering at them, filming them, bullying them, or harassing them. If I saw a man doing any of that to a fellow woman in the gym I’d raise hell in a heartbeat; I once chased a man down the streets of Lisbon, bellowing, “Stay away from her!” because a woman was yelling that he wouldn’t leave her alone. None of this is happening on my watch.

I mean that I think women would do well to accept that they might feel a bit uncomfortable in any gym, regardless of what men there are doing, because gyms can be complex spaces dominated by mysterious objects, opaque rules of behavior and etiquette, and historically, men who tend to feel more immediately comfortable there. It’s quite easy to feel like a clueless toddler surrounded by hulking gatekeepers who will tsk at your ineptitude when you bonk your head on the corner of the coffee table.

In my nearly 15 years of gym experience — which is not everyone’s, I know — the intimidation factor of the gym didn’t spring from men who were actually doing intimidating things to me; it came from me not knowing what I was doing yet and seeing a lot of people (often, a lot of men) who did. It came from not being physically strong or capable yet and seeing men who clearly were. The intimidation came from within; it was my entirely natural response to being in an unknown new place that demands certain skills and that has high potential for injury or embarrassment in front of an audience of strangers.

Obviously, men too often do threaten women’s safety and comfort in any given space, so we might enter fitness spaces with that baggage, too. I bring to the gym a personal history of being harassed and physically intimidated by men on the streets when they catcalled me, in the most harrowing elevator ride of my life when he kept stepping closer to me, in a bar when he came half an inch from my nose to scream that I was “a fucking fat bitch” (because I told him to leave my friend alone; he wasn’t taking no for an answer). The difference, as I see it now: In a gym, I can flag down a staff member and get the motherfucker banned for life. In the elevator, I can only silently pray for the relief of the door pinging open.

The article about The Women’s Gym (written by a man, lol) says women-only gyms give women permission to start small without feeling silly, to take up space. I say this in the spirit of encouragement: Men are not preventing us from doing this just because they’re there. It can feel that way if you have to navigate around clusters of them to grab some dumbbells, or if one of them is taking up two benches and six pieces of equipment. It has served me enormously, though, to see the gym as a space to practice standing up for my own needs without fearing I’m being impolite or an imposition.

I’m well within my rights to move around some dudes, grab the weights, and stand there in the same square footage to do my workout. It is not impolite or annoying for me to ask a man how much time he has left on the machine because I’m waiting for my turn. There is no reason to feel silly, because I am not doing anything silly — I suspect that any time I’ve thought I am, it’s because I’ve been conditioned to think of myself and my activities as frivolous, embarrassing, or inconvenient for others because I’m a woman.

You know what helped me get over those profound falsehoods, the ones that are so odious to me now I feel I’m gagging on them as I write them? Exercising in gyms where men are.

Realizing myself as someone who can blast past the insecurity and discomfort I feel within has helped me understand that I don’t need a dedicated space to exist and go about my business. I have that permission inherently, and I prove it to myself and everyone else there every time I step into the spaces that used to scare me. Fitness spaces are mine, too, and I feel deeply emboldened by making that known in a co-ed gym among men who damn well should see me and other women there. If I never take up space in the places I’m entitled to occupy, how can I claim they’re truly for me, too?

My book, The Forever Project (out in January, please pre-order!), details in each chapter the skills and personality traits I believe come from a regular exercise routine that you like; the central argument is that exercise doesn’t only or primarily affect your body, it affects your character for the better. In the gym or fitness context of your choice you become more resilient, more emboldened, more perceptive, and so forth. Then, you go out into the rest of your life to be those ways in other situations, too.

Through exercising in spaces that made me uncomfortable and intimidated — not because of what was happening in reality, but because of my fears — I proved to myself that I can become less so simply by showing up. I learned that things are often not as terrifying as I imagine. I saw that the vast majority of men in gyms aren’t creeps, don’t care about me, and are probably terrified of getting publicly shamed on TikTok for accidentally glancing at my ass, so they’re on their best behavior these days. I also learned how to be friends with the many good guys who are in the gym, who just want to talk about their gains and seem delighted by a woman who cares about such things, too.

If a woman has her reasons for joining a women-only gym, I respect them entirely. I’m not attempting to dissuade her away from them if she’s dead-set on their utility for any number of valid reasons. I’m suggesting, though, that any woman curious about a women-only gym because it might seem a little easier, consider what she might prove to herself when she does the potentially trickier thing instead.

Being comfortable, building up confidence, and taking up space in the gym is tricky, yes, but one of the more revelatory things I’ve learned in my years as a woman there is this:

Over time, through the power of my own grit and gumption, standing among men to heave and push and press more weight than I could have dreamed possible has become one of the easier things I do every week. There is so much I do that feels so much harder, as a daughter and wife and friend and woman who incorrectly internalized that just because I can do anything, I’m supposed to do everything. But moving with brazen spirit through the business of throwing weight around, no matter who is present or what they think of me? No sweat, really.

Further reading: This 2021 Vox piece by Chika Ekemezie.

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