The separate swimming hours have cause an enormous debate in Sweden, with many calling the move regressive and a ghettoization of women, while others laud it as a sensible inclusion of the country’s increasingly diverse population. This month Sweden’s democracy minister, Alice Bah Kuhnke, told Swedish TV that gender-segregated swimming hours – as the system is often referred to – are problematic and called mixed-gender swimming “a victory after many years and generations of gender-equality struggle.”

In Malmö, Iva Parizkova Ryggeståhl and her fellow members of the local International Women’s Association have spent a great deal of time talking about gender-separated swimming. At first, they weren’t sure how to feel about it, but now they’ve decided they’re opposed to it.

“Men who are not comfortable being in the same swimming pool as women should not be there,” Ms. Parizkova Ryggeståhl argues. “And we women shouldn’t care whether men are looking at us in the swimming pool or not, and whether they get jealous or not.”