Play equipment is a feminist issue

@artisanparsnips I wouldn't assume personally that nothing has changed because I only sent it this year and council projects usually have a long lead time. I see it as a long term movement for change.
Re the playground, I made changes to my local primary by engaging with the school on new equipment and having girls only football days. It's a bit hit and miss but I'll settle for imperfection because it puts ideas into the heads of the next generation, both boys and girls, and that's better than nothing.

If they aren’t corralled into safe activities, the thinking is they’ll make their own fun which will probably involve vandalism, petty crime and anti social behaviour.

I think there has also been a big shift in what is considered anti-social behaviour since my youth.

When we were teenagers we used to go drinking by the local castle in the summer. The police knew this. They used to stop by, remind us not to go into the town centre and cause trouble, to make sure everyone got home safely and if there was someone they didn't know they'd enquire who they were, where they lived etc. Otherwise they left us to get on with it. That would never happen today.

I get your point, it is true that girls are partly planned out because they have needs that are not met. Group of boys can play football for hours/all day in park and pee in bush. Girls can’t! Plus any individuals or small group of girls would just leave if group boys turned up to use same space.

Just like playtime should back in primary school. Boys took up 80% space with games. Girls stood edges keeping out of the way

I know it’s not quite the same but secondary school playgrounds are interesting. Boys dominate the space, especially MuGAs. Girls tend to be more peripheral. This is rarely polices for fairness. And students are often mature enough in their bodies for mixed sex sport to be less possible than it was in primary.

If they aren’t playing sport, boys seem to be generally more physical and dominate space by being loud and boisterous.

This is a huge generalisation of course. And anecdotal. Another place to consider though - there may be reports on this.

to be honest I run double that distance when I go so it wouldn't be very challenging.

Yes, I prefer to run longer, but the speed aspect is a challenge. I'm lucky enough to live 2.5km from one, so it's a nice 10k all together :)

one of the main problems we have in the UK is vandalism
Ah that word vandalism, one of those words that is gender neutral, when we know it is males doing the damage.

We know this is true because any female involvement would definitely be specifically stated.

Teenage boys have skateparks and basketball courts provided for them because they’re a problem. If they aren’t corralled into safe activities, the thinking is they’ll make their own fun which will probably involve vandalism, petty crime and anti social behaviour.

Girls tend to sit around in each other’s bedrooms or on park benches. Far less threatening to society.

andyoldlabour they also seem to be popular all across Europe. I think because they don't compare to the heavier stuff in a gym you don't get the musclebound grunters dominating these spaces, and so anyone feels free to have a go. It would be nice to see more provision like this for older people who want to exercise outdoors too.
deydododatdodontdeydo I have heard of park run but haven't tried it. Definitely a nice idea and I might try it one time, but to be honest I run double that distance when I go so it wouldn't be very challenging.

artisanparsnips
Fantastic, I used to love swinging over those bars.
There doesn't appear to be a name for this (mainly girl) activity.

Now there's a surprise.

I think one of the main problems we have in the UK is vandalism.

This is sadly true. The council built a new play park round the corner from me, aimed at children rather than teenagers, including a small climbing wall.

It opened on the Monday. On the Friday night the climbing wall was burnt down.

This is why I suspect the council are unwilling to invest in assault course type activities. You can't burn down a concrete skate park. A wooden assault course though...It is also why all our newer football pitches and basket ball courts are fences off, gated and not free.

My local swimming pool is great and attracts a lot of women and girls. It is specially geared up for disabled users and the 'serious' swimmers tend to avoid it as it is 20m and very shallow at the shallow end so they tend to head for the 25m pool at the leisure centre in the neighbouring town, or in the summer use the 33m salt water lido in the next one over again. The lido is ace but you do have to avoid certain times if you want to use the lanes as the more competitive types tend to dominate.

When I was a teenager I loved swimming and went twice a week. We had an open air pool. You could get a season ticket and I used to go nearly every day during the summer holidays.

The pools were fairly basic, nothing like the leisure centres we have now, but they were cheap. In my teens a swim cost the same as a Mars bar. Now it's many times more expensive.

One of the reasons I enjoyed it was because you didn't get hassled in the way you might in a park. We had life guards that kept an eye.

@artisanparsnips I did get a reply from one of them (a woman).
I deliberately sent it on paper so that it had to be filed away somewhere, ensuring that another person read it. I always use snail mail for Councils/Government departments/banks because email just disappears.

Parents spend more money and money on girls, on average, and girls are far more likely to be doing paid for / structured activities after-school than boys. This is even more true if compared to boys who don’t like / can’t play traditional sports.

Even the local skateboarding / bmx clubs tend to be more populated by girls as boys tend to just use the local facilities by themselves or with friends.

Oh, and to add - the volunteers, race directors, marshals, etc are often women too, and all ages go, from kids to old age people.

As soon as a girl or group of girls are engaged in any kind of physical activity it becomes pornified in the minds of male observers who see it as their place to display dominance and comment on your activity. So dispiriting.

Slightly off topic but have you tried Park Run?
The male/female mix is very even (my two local runs had 22m/29f and 244m/204f respectively last week.
All ages are present, it's very supportive. I'm not aware of any kind of pornification taking place, it's very supportive and very fun.

IMO, Pinkification is to blame. And yes, that's a serious observation.

Look at how we (as in society) 'sort' and categorize our kids from birth. Aisles for girls: pastel pinks and lilacs resembling an explosion in a sugared almond factory. Boys' aisles: bright primary colours. As recently as the 70s and 80s, the latter category were the generic colours for children. This [marketing] division has happened recently.

And it doesn't stop at pink and blue. I was asked about my baby 'girl' because he had a purple pram. Since when was purple 'gendered?' And so it goes on.

Then there's content. Girls: unicorns, rainbows, castles and Disney. Boys: lego, dinosaurs, castles (hooray I found a unisex one, but they're still differentiated by colour).

So by their teens, they're well and truly lost to these barking mad conventions and they're 'naturally' (more accurately, conditioned) to sort themselves into categories perceived to be based on gender. By this reasoning skate parks might very well be perceived as male, even though they're really not.

A number of the recreational facilities in our general area have zip lines. The same differentiation doesn't seem to apply to these. But to most, i.e. football and cricket pitch, climbing frames etc, it does.

It's all completely arbitrary, completely baseless, yet ever-present, drip-fed and insidious ideology which causes our young people no end of problems. Some people see it as frivolously harmless: 'ah, but little girls like pink, don't they?' I see it as an ominous problem and a backward step in social equality. And unfortunately, it's not one that's likely to go away any time soon.

At all the skate parks I've ever seen, the boys do the skating and the girls hang about sitting on benches. I don't think the girls are intimidated, or they wouldn't be there at all.

I disagree! I used to be that girl hanging out with skateboarding boys. It never occurred to me to join in on my roller skates until I was in my 20s, despite roller skating since childhood. I didn't have the confidence to take risks like that in front of them, in case I was crap. I feel really sad thinking about this now.

UpfieldHatesWomen

You won't believe this, but the first time I saw that outdoor gym equipment, was when I visited Iran (Tehran) back in 2009, and people of all ages were using it. They seemed to be evident in most of the parks and were kept in good condition. I think one of the main problems we have in the UK is vandalism.

livingintehran.com/2018/08/19/free-outdoor-gyms-across-tehran/

I photocopied relevant pages of "Invisible Women" and sent it to my local Cllrs who Chair the Young Peoples, Parks, Facilities committees, with a recommendation that they read the whole book. Once you read it your eyes are opened. I pass primary school playgrounds all the time where the boys dominate the space playing football and the girls stand at the edges chatting. Everyone thinks it's normal and then wonders why engagement with sport plummets for teenage girls. The whole book is an eye opener.

My old council funded free self defence courses for women and girls with a female instructor at a local sports centre. I did it and it was great! More classes and activities being funded would be popular with girls I think.

There's a big skate park in the middle of my city, which has really good facilities for skateboards and BMX bikes. The problem is that it is poorly policed- there's frequent anti-social behaviour and lots of older males hanging around it. I don't see many girls using it at all, maybe one or two in all the times I've been passed it. I wouldn't be very happy with my DS using it either because of the alcohol and drug use.