Women are now also allowed to swim laps in Berlin swimming pools with a bare upper body. Authorities granted permission after a 33-year-old woman complained that men “do”oben ohneallowed to swim. She thought that was discrimination and she was right.
The woman was asked to cover her breasts in a swimming pool in Berlin-Kaulsdorf in December, Der Spiegel reports. She refused and was then ejected from the pool. The woman did not stop there and filed a discrimination complaint with the ombudsman service of the state.
She pointed out that the house rules of the German capital’s swimming pools contain no gender-specific provisions and only state that bathers must wear ‘standard’ swimsuits. There is no mention of covering the upper body. The authorities now determined that no one has to cover the chest anymore, and that applies to both the indoor and outdoor pools.
“Equal rights”
The decision creates “equal rights for all Berliners, whether male, female or non-binary” and also creates “legal certainty for the staff in the bathing establishments,” the head of the ombudsman service, Doris Liebscher, told the German medium. “The point now is that the regulation is applied consistently and that evictions or restraining orders are no longer issued.”
Last year, according to ‘Der Spiegel’, several cities in Germany introduced already shirtless swimming for all genders in municipal swimming pools. This happened, for example, in Siegen in North Rhine-Westphalia and Göttingen in Lower Saxony.
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