Many students use the Fordham University fitness centers because they are convenient, included in the cost of tuition and have improved significantly since renovations in 2022.
Post construction, there is now a cardio room, a weight room and two dance/multipurpose studios instead of one room with a large bucket in the center collecting murky water from a dripping ceiling. Still, because of the limited space on the Fordham (FLC) campus, the gym is overwhelmingly crowded by men.
Men grunting, men hogging the equipment, men being loud and intimidating to others trying to use the facility. Despite women making up more than half of the undergraduate population, according to U.S. News, space in the gym is disproportionately taken up by men.
Women’s lack of comfort in the gym often starts in girlhood.
My suggestion for this problem? Have a time every week or biweekly that is exclusively for women.
Almost all facilities on the FLC campus are relatively small. The weight room in particular, boasts three leg machines and four arm machines. It includes one racked barbell and one additional barbell. Those who frequent gyms know that this is sparse equipment. During busy hours, there is almost always a wait for machines — especially the barbells — with those waiting hawkishly attuned to every set.
Because college is a transitional period in many young adults’ lives, the change of routine can be a good time to get into (or back into) fitness. I’ve met women who desire to get into a fitness routine but experience anxiety around not knowing what to do. Women’s lack of comfort in the gym often starts in girlhood. According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, “By age 14, many girls are dropping out of sports at two times the rate of boys.” This is for reasons such as a lack of access, safety issues, stigma and lack of role models.
With these statistics and the observation of the gender dynamics of the RamFit Center, Fordham should be working harder to create equal opportunity. When the fitness center is constantly full, especially with men, it can be uncomfortable to try machines for the first time, especially when first learning how equipment works. I personally only try unfamiliar apparatus when the gym is empty over the summer or on a break.
This phenomena is also backed by my conversations with others on campus. In the women’s locker room, where unfamiliar people often don’t exchange more than a few words with each other, the most common topic of all conversations I have had is about feeling uncomfortable around the men in the fitness center. It is intimidating to enter a room full of people who feel like they are all in on something you’re not, and that is how the weight room has been described.
Once I was using a barbell for hip thrusts, already alternating sets with a friend, and a man came up and asked us if he could have the barbell. Not if he could be guaranteed the next use, but if he could take it from us right then and there. When we declined, he then asked us to teach him how to do hip thrusts and inserted himself into the rotation, proclaiming that the weight was too easy while throwing off our own workout.
A variety of reasons, from modesty to comfortability, can make the RamFit Center stressful for women; prompting the importance of women feeling comfortable to use the gym will improve the overall health of the campus.
This is not the only time I have been approached by a male Fordham student at the gym while trying to focus on my own workout. Another time, after having retreated to a studio in the wake of a frustrating encounter with an entitled man in the weight room, I was shortly followed in. I was in a corner, stretching while facing into the wall, and he set up right beside me, despite room elsewhere in the studio. He started commenting on my flexibility, repeating his comments after making me remove a headphone to hear. Then he turned to an ab workout that included such loud and consistent grunting I simply had to get up and call it a day.
A consistent time dedicated for women to use the fitness center would make many students more excited to utilize a gym that they may already be using, and it will likely make those nervous to use the facilities more confident. A variety of reasons, from modesty to comfortability, can make the RamFit Center stressful for women; prompting the importance of women feeling comfortable to use the gym will improve the overall health of the campus.
My suggestion may elicit questions: Are you going to require birth certificates to make it through the already extreme measures of security? How are you going to define and police who is a woman, who is not a man and who is allowed? Are exclusionary measures the right option in this case?
First, defining and policing is not the point here. I think the designated hours should be adopted and flagged for the community and put on the schedule. After that, whoever goes to the fitness center during the women’s period goes to the gym during that time with the knowledge of its intended purpose.
The point of this policy is to make the gym a more welcoming place for women on campus. Any arguments beyond that are avoiding the point. Students here are adults, and can identify how they would like the same way that they identify when using any other gendered services and locations on campus: doing what is helpful for themselves.
The fitness center is an amenity of Fordham University that should be a place for students to destress and exercise. RamFit needs to continue improving to meet student needs by reserving a time that is designated for women.
