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Male senators no longer repair after-hours to their hideaway offices for drinking, cigar-smoking and all-male deal-making, as they did decades ago.
But if they are after the exclusive company of their male peers, the U.S. Senate's 98 men can still find it in the Senate gym, where the Senate's two women are not inclined to venture. Or they can head for the Senate swimming pool, which asks the Senate's two women to book visits in advance - lest they run into those male senators who still swim in the nude.
Despite its many changes over the years, the Senate remains the male-dominated, male-centered institution that it has been since the founding of the republic. That fact is making the Senate less than ideally suited to judging the sexual harassment charges filed by professor Anita Hill against her former boss, Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, critics say.
The Senate has taken heat for failing to sufficiently investigate Hill's charges, as well as for some of the comments about sexual harassment that male senators have made since the charges were disclosed.
"It's still a club of powerful older men - run like a Bohemian Grove, East," said Pat Reuss, a lobbyist and former aide to former Sen. Gary Hart, D-Colo., referring to the...