House Made Gym Dandy for 23 Women

WASHINGTON —  It took a song-and-dance to get them there, but after being relegated for years to a tiny “ladies’ health facility,” the 23 women members of the House have finally fought their way into the congressional gymnasium.

The exclusion of women from the well-equipped gym had been the subject of a sometimes-contentious dispute between male members determined to maintain their traditional preserve and female members who said the women’s facility was grossly inadequate--”six hair dryers and a Ping-Pong table,” as Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) described it.

The turning point came when Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae) put protests against the men-only rule to music.

First at a May fund-raiser, then last month at a mostly male meeting of House Democratic whips, Boxer and Ohio Reps. Mary Rose Oakar and Marcy Kaptur belted out their appeal to the plaintive tune of “Has Anybody Seen My Gal?”

Part of the ditty went:

Exercise, glamorize,

Where to go, will you advise

Can’t everybody use your gym?

Equal rights, we’ll wear tights,

Let’s avoid those macho fights,

Can’t everybody use your gym?

Quiet exchanges followed with Rep. Edward P. Boland (D-Mass.), chairman of the gym committee, and a deal was struck two weeks ago: The women would use their own swimming-pool changing room, then climb a staircase and enter the gym through a back door.

Already, Boxer says, women members are planning to start an aerobics class, have invited male members to join, and expect Rep. Claudine Schneider (R-R.I.) to be their leader.

Yet the singing continues. Boxer, Oakar, and Kaptur, who have dubbed themselves “The Red, White, and Blues,” gave an encore performance at a barbecue sponsored by House Majority Leader Jim Wright.

And Boland and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) plan a musical response at next week’s annual congressional gym dinner.

According to Frank, this year’s dinner is the first to be “integrated.”