'I've never seen a woman do that to a man in a gym': Do women really feel empowered in fitness spaces?
It was the large stack of pamphlets in the women's changing rooms, advertising a local aesthetic treatment clinic, that made the red mist descend.
'Everything you need at one place — lip fillers, fat dissolving, anti-wrinkle treatment, plasma pen/fibroblast' was their message and they were strategically placed on a shelf directly in your eye-line at the main mirror.
I'd only just returned to this gym, able once again to afford membership post-covid.
More fool me. If someone wasn't getting a paid one-to-one lesson, I rarely saw staff giving out any technical or corrective advice on the floor; a real red flag.
This was a gym that provided only one hairdryer in the women's changing room.
It also, at one point, removed all the bottle holders in the shower cubicles, forcing you to grapple blindly at your feet for your products like some drunken penguin.
Small issues maybe, but hardly 'female friendly'.
Now they were allowing in fliers hawking invasive third-party treatments to women, in a space meant to be promoting health and fitness?
Sports journalist, writer and broadcaster Cliona Foley. Picture: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie.
The poor unfortunate woman manning the front desk got an earful, including my demand to know if these same adverts were inside the men's changing rooms? We both already knew the answer.
Now in my early 60s, I have been using mixed, commercial gyms for four decades.
As a PE teacher in the early 80s, when the Irish fitness industry was in its infancy, I actually taught aerobics in one in some neon lycra that would have seared Jane Fonda's eyeballs.
As lifting machines and free weights arrived on these shores, I was an early adopter and often a rare woman using them.
Now, 40 years later, women are just as likely to be doing a barbell box squat as their male counterparts. Designer exercise gear and full glam make-up has become de rigueur while parkrun and Hyrox, followed by post-workout brunch, have become a standard part of many women's Saturdays.
After years of trying to drive home the important of exercise and sport for girls (evidence suggests participation plummets during the teen years with just 7% of girls age 14 15 years meeting recommended physical activity levels), that seems like something to celebrate.
Yet my own recent experiences in gyms made me wonder — how empowered do women feel in these spaces?
Women's experiences
Emma Cowley is a post-doctorate researcher at the SHE Centre in Technological University of the Shannon Athlone, which exclusively studies women in sport and sports science.
She joined Jekaterina Schneider (Liverpool John Moores University) for their global study in 2024 entitled 'Women's body image and experiences of exercising in gym settings'.
It confirmed that the oldest trope about women and weight training has been well busted.
Liverpool John Moores University's global study in 2024 entitled 'Women's body image and experiences of exercising in gym settings' confirmed that the oldest trope about women and weight training has been well busted.
The majority (87%) of their 420 respondents, aged mostly between 18-50 (but older too) had no qualms about getting muscular and really embraced weight and resistance training.
However, the research found 'no significant correlation between muscularity/athleticism internalisation with body appreciation', finding that many women who had high levels of the former still 'also internalised the thin ideal'. Even in this fourth wave of feminism and the lauded 'body positivity' movement, some vexing contradictions clearly remain.
A quarter of respondents were concerned about their stretch marks, a fifth worried about their acne, 55% said their stomach was the area of most concern, and a whopping 48%+ were worried that their underwear showed in their leggings.
Many said they would never judge other women in the gym yet admitted they worried that other women judged them. Some felt self-conscious in skin-tight gear but felt it was imperative so people wouldn't underestimate their experience or capability.
Even in gyms, some women still feel they need to 'look the part'. Cowley found one study that estimated some women spend up to 40 minutes applying makeup before workouts.
Perhaps most pertinent to the recent puerile argument that women in workout gear distract men in gyms, this research reiterated previous findings about harassment, micro-bullying, and safety. Some women in mixed gyms said they still have to fight for space. Men were reported as 'taking up an unholy amount' of it and feeling entitled to take gym equipment that women were using.
Women described feeling 'sexualised', 'annoyed', 'objectified', 'creeped out', 'uneasy', 'scared', 'threatened', and 'unsafe' due to unwanted stares and comments from men — with 72% reporting getting at least one such unsolicited comment in a gym.
Almost half (46.6%) reported getting unsought compliments on their appearance – 72% of those comments came from men.
Cowley and Schneider summarised their findings under four headings: Never Enough; Often Too Much; Always On Display; Sometimes Empowered. Social media may be driving healthier aspirations of strength, power and fitness but the 'fitspo' movement largely presents an idealised, slim body type.
Cowley was genuinely shocked to find gym-going women 'still aspiring to unrealistic images' and suggests that women-only or specialist lifting gyms might be less intimidating and judgemental spaces for some women.
Almost half of women reported getting unsought compliments on their appearance – 72% of those comments came from men.
Nicole O'Shea is the general manager of Women's Fitness, a female-only gym in Cork which also has branches in Dublin (Sandyford), and Limerick (Raheen). She has worked in the industry for years and seen the huge growth and change in how women exercise.
'I've seen 'women's only' areas in mixed gyms and sometimes that's a pink corner with a few dumbbells and kettle bells but that is not what women want. Women are strong and well able to lift and we're increasingly finding that's what they want,' she says.
'We have a few thousand members in Cork alone and, since covid, we've expanded the gym floor here and opened a whole new weights room, full of plated machines and squat racks.
'This originally was a women's-only gym. When the new owners took over six years ago, the plan was to turn it into a mixed gym. They consulted with the existing members who said they enjoyed the all-female culture, so they took that on board.
'Our clientele ranges in age from girls starting at 16 to women in their 80s and the biggest feedback from them all is that they feel comfortable here, that they feel safe. It's not intimidating, it's a very relaxed and a very supportive community.'
Sinéad McNamara is a member of Women's Fitness Cork since it opened.
'I'm a nurse and a mom [of three] so I'm quite busy,' she said. 'I always exercised but as I got older — I'm now in my late 40s — my knees were giving me trouble after years of running so I decided I wanted to do more resistance training as I aged and I haven't looked back. I lift weights three times a-week, just a half hour each time, and it's fantastic.
'I used to go to another gym and often trained with a female friend of mine. Sometimes fellas would come over and say 'oh you're doing this wrong'. They'd be trying to be helpful. I personally didn't feel intimidated but we'd be thinking 'would they ever just leave us alone? We can do our own thing'.
"When an all-female gym opened, I thought that would be great and I really love the atmosphere and camaraderie here.'
Despite all the experience and knowledge she has amassed, McNamara still found herself subjected to more mansplaining elsewhere last summer.
'I was on holidays in Spain, using the gym in the resort and the exact same thing happened to me. I really know how to use equipment now, I've been doing it for years but a guy came over and tried to correct me,' she said.
'I've never seen a woman do that to a man in a gym, or a woman do it to another woman. It does make you wonder.'
Up for debate
While I was compiling my thoughts and experience of finding aesthetic leaflets in the gym for this magazine, a piece in the London Times went viral.
Authored by Robert Crampton and headlined 'I'm in the gym with semi-clad young women. Where do I look?', it sparked a contentious debate online and on the airwaves.
A panel discussion on Newstalk's Lunchtime Live included one of Ireland's best-known personal trainers, gym owner Paul Byrne. He stated young girls were 'practically wearing bikinis' to work out.
'It's narcissistic,' he continued, 'if young girls have amazingly shaped bodies that they are showing off... they should cover up a little bit you know.'
Cue the backlash as women posted snaps of themselves in sports bras, shorts, and leggings sarcastically captioned 'my gym bikini'.
On the same panel, personal trainer and content creator Nathalie Lennon's response spoke for many: 'For years, women were told to be skinny, and now we are embracing strength, muscle, and we are being shamed again. We should be allowed feel empowered, not policed when we are working on our health.'
Gym culture has evolved considerably in the last 40 years. It's now full of egalitarian spaces, aspirations and aphorisms, but, as the recent research and debate shows, not everything about it is quite as empowering and judgement-free as my generation had hoped.
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