Play equipment is a feminist issue

[artisanparsnips]

I've posted the message below on chat, but would really like your perspective on this as well. I'm starting to talk to people who might be interested in campaigning on this, so would love feedback.

Quick question, what outdoor play facilities are there in your local area for older children - skate park, graffiti wall, pump track? And how much are they used by girls? And is there anything else that the girls use?

I'm asking because my eyes have been totally opened by the Caroline Criado Perez book, where she points out, almost incidentally, that almost all facilities for older/teenage children are used mostly by boys. I looked at what was on offer in my town and lo, it was all the above, and a football/basketball pitch. And I watched all summer and they were all used by 80% boys at best.

So I really want to know how usual/unusual this is, and any other thoughts that you have.

And yes, I have name changed because anyone who knows me will recognise this issue straight away....

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

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.

@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.

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.

Also, doing my research here, skate parks are enormously expensive £150-200k. That's part of the reason I am so pissed off by all of this.

@Dilkhush I'm guessing nothing has changed...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 :)

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.

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

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.

@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.

I'm now looking at other skate park consultations. This one in Oxford is amazingly honest:

"The main concern is that a skate park is intended for a very narrow target demographic, mainly boys and young men, aged approximately 10 to 19."

Once this is admitted, the Equality Duty problem is a slam dunk, I think.

Fascinating thread. Thank you for starting.
Nothing to add but I will be reading all the links.

I would definitely be up for campaigning on this. Maybe a letter template on MN for people to send to their council. ?An FOI to ask for the findings of the last assessment on council activity equipment in public areas which assesses sex/gender impact of spending. Or something. Thinking out loud a bit so totally happy to be corrected with better ideas.

There’s no good reason for basketball to be a boys sport or netball girls. Unfortunately there is a lack of funding and support for girls team sports.

This is only kind of true. It's true that boys and girls could play the same sports. The reason for having slightly different sports associated with boys vs girls are often pretty arbitrary. But the problem is with offering all the same sports to gild tends to be that the traditionally "girls" sports, which are really just as good in many cases, tend to lose out.

A good example where I live is hockey vs ringette. It used to be that hockey was boys, ringette was girls. Ringette is a perfectly good sport, some people prefer it, and there were some good competitive girls leagues where girls were really supported to be active.

However, as there was more and more push to include girls in hockey, ringette has really lost out. Many teams can't get enough girls and some are now mixed sex in order to get enough kids, which isn't horrible but it means that it becomes difficult to have even teams. In the mean time, girls and women's hockey isn't identical to mens, it has no checking and tends to be a different game as a result - a lot like ringette, in fact.

Is this better, or worse, or neutral, I don't know. But it does represent the loss of what was an active female led, female focused organisation in order to have some sort of surface level of equivalence to men.

Yay. I think anyone can ask their council very simply what play equipment is provided for older children and whether this provision has been assessed under the Public Sector Equality Duty. I have a simple para on PSED which I can send to anyone who wants.

The biggest problem I am finding right now is that there is no research, or at least not that I can find. If I could prove that skate parks are mostly used by boys, that would be a really good start.

I also want to get the legal side of the PSED nailed down, so would like to have an informal chat to a public sector lawyer. If we can get an informal legal opinion that they are all in breach, then we are way ahead.

I'm also talking to a public body who campaign in this area and who might get involved, but this will take a month or two to achieve.

ps. When I first wrote to our council about this, the response was: “We never consider investment in our parks to be either for boys or girls.”

Which is pretty much sums up the ethos of ‘default male’. Only when I told them that they were being illegal did they start listening

Here are the best of my links so far:

A good report on Einsiedler Park in Vienna: www.wpsprague.com/research-1/2017/1/6/more-girls-to-parks-case-study-of-einsiedler-park-viennamilota-sidorova

The full manual for being a gender mainstream city, in English. www.wien.gv.at/stadtentwicklung/studien/pdf/b008358.pdf

The Barcelona playground was designed by architects Equal Saree. Their website is in Spanish, Catalan and French, but here is the French report on their project:
equalsaree.org/fr/blog/2019/02/01/passons-le-samedi-a-placa-baro/
However there has just been a really good BBC report on Barcelona’s planning for equality in general which gives a good view of the playground:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-50269778/what-would-a-city-designed-by-women-be-like
Equal Saree have also written a report on feminist play design, but it’s in Catalan…
ia601300.us.archive.org/11/items/elpatidelescolaengualtat/El%20Pati%20de%20l'Escola%20en%20Igualtat_Dafne%20Saldaña%20Blasco.pdf

The Swedish consultation process is outlined here:
open-city.org.uk/journal/why/

In Malmo, a good overview of their girl-designed play area:
nosegregation.tilda.ws/segregationrodamatta
Theory here:
www.balticurbanlab.eu/goodpractices/involvement-youth-public-space-planning-malmö
www.charter-equality.eu/exemple-de-bonnes-pratiques/urban-planning-on-girls-conditions.html

The only study I have been able to find which looks at boys’ and girls’ behaviour in park playgrounds is this one:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6069007/
However, I don’t have academic access to journals so there may be more.

Outline of the Public Sector Equality Duty:
www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/public-sector-equality-duty

Once this is admitted, the Equality Duty problem is a slam dunk, I think.

No, not unless you can show there aren't also things for girls. There is nothing wrong with a particular facility having a narrow target demographic. It's more common than not really in public facilities.

I think a pp who pointed out that girls are more involved in organised activities is probably right on the mark. Many school and other activities now are female dominated to some extent, music activities, art, dance, a lot of school related clubs and activities. In itself that will tend to mean fewer girls available to use the kinds of facilities you are thinking of.

Analysis of this kind of statistic really has two levels and you need both. One will be the lower level analysis, who is using these sporting or park facilities. But that will never tell you the real story, unless you know what all the other kids are doing with their time. You have to integrate the information about public parks into the larger picture of activities for youth.

But in terms of funding, our local council doesn't fund much of that kind of thing at all (is only a town council). And they provide no facilities in the parks which are used by older girls more than boys. So I would argue that they are not being equal.

There is a whole other side issue, which I am also arguing with them, which is that they fund male sports and not female sports, so I'm not sure they've got a leg to stand on really.

Also, as far as I can tell, the lower level analysis isn't being done in the first place, never mind anything beyond that. But I'd be happy to be proved wrong.

communityplanningaberdeen.org.uk/participation-involvement/

Your community should have a page like this. If not, it will have some or all of the groups listed.

As well as writing to the council as an individual, it's worth getting involved in these groups.

This discussion is so important.

Our local parks: one has an outdoor gym which does get used by teenage girls. It's quite close to a caravan park so any tomfoolery is nipped in the bud.

One is grass with a bandstand. Girls like talking in the bandstand but it's often full of broken glass.

One is a lovely park with climbing frames and swings.
It's beside a big car park that's dead at night, since the council started charging for parking a year ago.
In the past year it's become quite a nasty place to be.
There's no community warden or police presence.