Female-only swimming sessions are not a cultural luxury. They are a proven, evidence-based public safety measure that too many Australian women still cannot access.

Despite being one of the driest continents on earth, Australians live around water, from beaches and rivers to backyard pools. Yet drowning remains one of our most persistent and preventable public safety failures.

In the 12 months to June 2025, 357 people drowned nationwide, the highest annual toll in decades and around 27 per cent above the long-term average. Over the 2024–25 summer, 104 lives were lost across rivers, beaches, swimming pools, and inland waterways, about 14 per cent higher than the average summer toll over the previous five years. Drowning rates in regional and remote areas were nearly three times higher than in major cities. These deaths occurred in every state and territory.

Drowning is often called an accident. The data tells a different story. Children drown. Teenagers drown. Working-age adults die in the water. Older Australians face the highest drowning rates. People born in Australia drown, as do those born overseas. Men and women are equally affected. City residents drown, while people in regional and remote areas face nearly three times the risk. Rates are also higher in disadvantaged communities. These patterns are not random. They reflect unequal access to safety.

Drowning is not about bad luck. It is overwhelmingly about access to swimming skills and water safety education. Nearly half of Year 6 students cannot swim 50 metres or tread water for two minutes, the minimum benchmark expected by the end of primary school. Adults who miss these skills early rarely acquire them later, and the risk compounds over a lifetime. For women, mothers, and grandmothers, social, cultural, privacy, body image, and safety factors often block access to swimming. As a result, many women and girls never learn to swim.

Public pools assume mixed-gender environments are universally accessible. For many women, they are not. Women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, older women, survivors of trauma, women with disability, and women with body image or safety concerns often avoid public pools for years or decades.

Low participation leads to low swimming competence, which increases drowning risk. Evidence shows swimming skills and water confidence pass from mother to child. Children are more likely to learn to swim when their mothers can. Without these skills, drowning risk becomes embedded in families and communities. You cannot learn to swim in a pool you never enter.

Female only swimming sessions are not a cultural concession or lifestyle choice. They are a life saving measure. Structural barriers such as lack of privacy, mixed gender settings, body image, safety concerns, and cultural norms prevent some women from participating. Where female only sessions exist, participation rises immediately. Women who have never floated, treaded water, or learned basic survival skills begin learning for the first time.

An early trial at Canberra Olympic Pool in October 2019 showed the impact. The ACT Government ran a one-month gender specific program. Female only sessions were on Saturdays, male only sessions on Sundays. A total of 274 women and 134 men attended. Eighty one women enrolled in learn to swim lessons. The program targeted those unable to join mixed gender settings.

Other states have similar programs. In Western Australia, Royal Life Saving WA runs women-only Swim and Survive programs during school terms, with female instructors and culturally appropriate lessons. In Victoria, women only sessions are offered at leisure centres, including the multicultural Swim Unity program at Maribyrnong Aquatic Centre, free lessons at Melbourne City Baths, and programs at Hume and Ascot Vale. All are designed to build confidence, inclusion, and water safety.

Many participants later join mixed gender sessions once confidence grows. Safety and dignity create pathways to inclusion, not barriers.

The public safety benefits go beyond individual swimmers. Mothers who cannot swim are less confident supervising children around water and less able to respond in emergencies. Swimming skills and confidence pass between generations. When women gain water confidence, children learn earlier, supervision improves, and participation normalises.

Female swimming participation is not peripheral to drowning prevention. It is central.

Swimming is also a public health issue. It is a low cost, high-impact initiative that improves cardiovascular health, mobility, and mental wellbeing across the life course. For older women, aquatic activity supports independence and reduces the risk of falls. For working-age women, better health boosts workforce participation and productivity. Female only sessions also help reduce social isolation, particularly among older and migrant women.

Critics argue that female only sessions are exclusionary. This is not the case. Public pools already offer children-only lessons, seniors programs, disability-specific sessions, and low-stimulus quiet hours. These remove structural barriers to essential services. Equality does not mean identical treatment. It means equitable access to safety.

State, territory, and local governments, together with councils, need to act. Female-only swimming sessions in public pools are essential public safety infrastructure. Federal and state governments need to provide funding and policy support, and councils need to implement the programs at community pools. Pools need to offer allocated sessions at times of day and days of the week that are practical for women and girls, similar to the ACT trial in 2019. These sessions need to include privacy measures and be supervised by female lifeguards. Adult learn-to-swim programs need to be specifically designed for women, with teaching methods, pace, and content suited to adults rather than adapted from children’s lessons. Water safety agencies need to collect and publish participation and outcome data so these programs can be measured, evaluated, and scaled nationwide.

Australia would never accept a road safety system that left a high-risk population unprotected. We would not tolerate workplace safety laws that ignored participation barriers. Yet in water safety, this is exactly what continues to happen.

As drowning deaths rise and summers grow longer and hotter, every delay carries consequences. Every woman who is unable to access swimming due to social, cultural, privacy, body image, or safety barriers is a known risk left unaddressed. Every preventable drowning is a policy failure.

Female-only swimming saves lives. If Australia is serious about public safety, action cannot wait.