So it turns out that even saving the planet isn't women friendly

[artisanparsnips]

Our local council have done lots of tree planting over half term. Which is lovely and saves the planet, and is good for us all. Etc etc etc.

Except one of the places they have chosen is open lawn/grass either side of a path which links in to community-owned fields and is a way into town for lots of people. Now it's densely planted and will turn into woodland.

It's fine now, but in 20 years time it's going to be a much less safe place for women to walk at dusk, at night, in the winter. Do I think they even assessed for this? No I don't.

So once again, it's women who are going to have to change their behaviour and men not.

I'm in a bad mood and just so sick of all this. My council hate me anyway for raising the question about girl-friendly play spaces, and I really am not sure I can face being the po-faced negative feminist being against all teh lovely green trees. But I am.

@FlamingoAndJohn That's the kind of stuff I would like to see in our park: we have one multi-user swing, a skate park, a football pitch, and elsewhere a pump track and graffiti wall. Yours has obviously been well designed. Our council wants to spend another £50k on refurbishing the skate park without doing an equality assessment. I'd like them to spend a tiny fraction of that money on relandscaping the park a bit to make it more girl friendly - and there is lots of research on how to do that.

@Strongmummy. The thing is, they are v forward thinking but the whole place is run by middle aged men who just do not see when they are being sexist. This is now the third occasion where they just haven't got it (play equipment + grants to sports clubs/men in general being the other two) so in some ways I do want to point out the sexism element of it in the hope that at some point they think first and act afterwards.

bingBang

It isn’t the pieces of equipment themselves, no one is talking about pretty pink benches so the girls can talk about shoes while the boys do ... man stuff..

It’s more that play spaces have traditionally grown (i won’t say designed) in such a way that a larger more boisterous group can push smaller less dominant social groupings off the spaces.

Couple this in with inadvertent creation of areas that are not overlooked, meaning that bullying behaviour takes place.

These 2 factors tends to mean that public spaces, play spaces are dominated by groups,of boys, and girls don’t get an equal chance to play.

Some girls do, obviously, just as some boys are pushed out, but overall national and international research is showing one of the factors in girls not getting as much excercise as boys is that girls can’t acces play spaces equally. Add that into traditional male sports getting facilities such as football fields, and the boys teams dominating the bookings for these when there are girls teams, and you have a huge cumulative Effect on the physical and mental health of women and girls.

I'd like them to spend a tiny fraction of that money on relandscaping the park a bit to make it more girl friendly - and there is lots of research on how to do that.

What facilities would you class as 'girl friendly'?

Regarding trees, I love romping around in the untended woodland behind work and would be horrified if they were tamed.

What is a girl friendly skate park? Excuse my ignorance but I thought it was just ramps and walls you skateboard on?

I'm still non the wiser.

How exactly do you make a park girl friendly?

The reason girls are less likely to run about and be daft, is that they're taught to worry more about what they look like than having fun.

This is really fascinating and not something I'd thought of.

However already on our mixed estate my 11 year old girl wont go out to play because of "boys on bikes." They've realised the green spaces between the houses are male spaces already...

artisan

Interestingly you say about skateparks, there is a big upsurge in girls skateboarding and ramp skating.

But I was chatting recently to a female ramp skater, in her early 20s, she very casually mentioned, as though it was of no consequence that she only uses the ramps early morning, or odd times. Because of the large groups of boys and young men that she feels makes for a hostile atmosphere. It seems that individually the lads are supportive, to a female practicing but she still feels unable to practice in front of them as a group.

I know the park she uses, and it is one large half pipe, and a couple of slide rails. Anyone sitting on the top of the halfpipe has a view of the whole skatepark, so big groups of non skating hangers on tend to hang out there heckling.

A facility I’ve seen a few miles away is more fragmented, with several bowls, and other features scattered ove a bigger area. Whilst there are no dodgy blind spots or hidden areas, theres also no one high vantage point where someone can sit and pass judgment.

This park has a much better m/f mix. So I think skateparks can be inclusive. IF they are done right.

Ive inadvertently answered coconuts question.

The other thing would be the size of ramps, until they’re built sufficient strength and technique, girls tend to need smaller starter ramps. Our local ones are just one massive half pipe.

Not an easy thing to learn on. Boys tend to learn by flinging themselves off the top of it. Girls tend to prefer to,build technique. (And we have less dense bones, so are more likely to break bones if they do try the hard way)

There are a couple of different issues here, quite apart from the trees, so let me see if I can answer both of them. But a lot of this is covered on the thread I linked to further up, especially the question about how to make parks more girl friendly.

The problem is that we have a skate park in a larger flat park, hence park confusion. Council want to refurbish the skate park, I argue that this should come with wider landscaping to make the park as a whole more gender neutral.

Yes, some girls do skate, but I agree it can be intimidating (our pump track is almost entirely used by boys who 'police' it in quite an intimidating way, I'd be scared to join in). There are ways round this - Sport Relief will only provide funding, for example, if there are going to be measures, whether that's clubs or times, which make sure that girls use it too. And the architecture of the skate park, as @WelcomeToTheMoutaintop says, makes a huge difference. I am all for all of this, but at the same time, parks also need to make space for what girls want to do. And the only way to do that is to ask girls.

@bingbangbing There are lots of ways to make a park more girl friendly - wider entrances into enclosed spaces, breaking it down into smaller areas, different equipment. But one of the key ones is wider sightlines, so that girls know what they are walking into. And that's why I am against the trees in the park. If you look at that other thread there is loads of research on there.

@WelcomeToTheMountaintop. I am also going to borrow what you said and send that to the council, it's exactly the point, thank you.

Maybe we just need to encourage girls into skateboarding at peak times. Get boys used to having girls about. Teaching them they are not necessarily better at skateboarding. Avoiding peak times or segregation isn't helpful as it just perpetuates that attitude that only boys belong.

I kind of get that at swimming where men don't think I belong in the fast lane and try and intimidate me out. I just stand (or swim) my ground.

I've been back to my Twitter thread about this, so here goes:

Right here are some resources for how to make parks more attractive to girls. Method one: tweak what you have. Here’s a very good case study from Vienna.

Method two: redesign your entire park so that it appeals to a wider range of people. Two case studies in this English document have done that. playengland.org.uk/media/70684/design-for-play.pdf

Method three, attract girls to what is already there, i.e girls only skate park times and lessons. I have reservations about this being the only approach because then you are telling girls that the problem is they should be more like boys. But as part of the package...

Method four: play rangers and facilitators. This makes playgrounds more equitable all round, for children with disabilities and minority groups as well as for girls. report here: playengland.org.uk/media/120465/people-make-play.pdf

How exactly do you make a park girl friendly?

The research on this is evolving. What we do know is how to (inadvertently) make them girl unfriendly.

It is more than just a social issue of girls being too self conscious to exercise, though that is a part of it. This is something where you really do have to do a class analysis of the whole thing. The problem isn’t visible at an individual level. It’s only when you step back to population level does it become clear.

Maybe we just need to encourage girls into skateboarding at peak times. Get boys used to having girls about

Exactly. And good inclusive design is fundamental to this. There are organisations like Chicks in Bowls (women’s ramp skating organisation) doing great work in holding female friendly sessions, lessons and increasing the visibility of women ramp skaters. But that’s all to nothing if it’s still too intimidating to skate.

But is is so hard to get people (old men on town councils) to see it.

Somewhere I also have a really lovely case study of a Stockholm park where they suddenly realised that all they were doing was building skate ramps and instead asked girls what they would want from a space. There's a dance area, but the thing that really struck me was that they ended up installing those rails to hang from which parks used to have and now don't any more.

@ArranUpsideDown. Sorry just seen your comments - thank you. Will look at those.

I think what we really need to think about is provision for young people who are not wanting to crash about and be boisterous. Not wanting to play football, use bmx or skateboard facilities.
Not boys vs girls. That thinking is as damaging for boys as it is girls.

Flamingo very true, and that is Happening and has been for a few years now. Most new play areas will have hang out zones for sitting and chatting, and many now include a trim trail or outdoor gym — with Nordic ski machines and excercise bikes.

I think we as designers and town planners thought that this would adress the balance when they started being included (it started to slowly change in Europe around 10 to 15 yrs ago) but it hasn’t. There is something else at play.

The council have cut down loads of trees and shrubs next to the skate park here. It used to be horribly secluded and I didn't even want DS going down there.
You can see the whole skate park from the main park now. Although it's still in the furthest quiet corner away from the car park.

Well it turns out that the whole lot is coming together in one giant piece of male fuckery.

The next place trees are going to be planted is in the main play park. Along the paths. Thereby going against every single piece of work on how to make parks more friendly to girls (and I have sent them ALL of it), and also making sure that it will be very difficult/impossible to relandscape the park to do this.

I've also seen some minutes in which they have assured the councilors that all their play equipment is assessed for equality. We have a skate park, a pump track and a games area (MUGA) all of which are used predominantly by boys. It's like building urinals and saying the girls can use them if they like.

I have a cold and I am so sodding tired of all of this. The council - i.e. the staff - are making it clear that girls are not of any value to them. The next stage will be to go public, and this really pisses me off.

It sounds like they may not even be doing a good job from the 'saving the planet' POV. Densely planted? I hope they've planned for a decent long term maintenance budget... if they've planted densely and then don't thin properly and manage it, they will get scrappy thin trees shooting upwards for the light with poor canopies.

the woods set back from the road a bit. The space right near the paths could be wildflowers!

I do some volunteering in a local nature reserve, with the Wildlife Trust. Much of it is on the sides of old railway embankments with a cycle path atop, much used by walkers too. Most of what we do is clearing brambles and saplings and cutting back overhanging branches (with professionals taking out a few trees) - this keeps the paths open, and allows light through, but from the wildlife POV allows diversity underneath.

Regarding trees, I love romping around in the untended woodland behind work and would be horrified if they were tamed.

Maybe you're lucky, but truly untended woodland isn't easy to 'romp around'!

Most lovely, wildlife-friendly woods are managed (not 'tamed')!

I can't help thinking how sad this is- trees are bad for girls now?

If girls are scared to go to a park, we need a crack down on anti social behaviour not flattening everything.

Parks with cafes are good. Just that presence discourages bad behaviour.

No, but trees in the wrong place planted thoughtlessly will make the park much less safe in low light. They're also likely to encourage vandalism.

@ErrolTheDragon Yes, I don't think they've even followed the Woodland Trust guidelines. It's a triumph of well meaningless over competence.

Adding this interesting thread about public spaces and facilities.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4181054-Teenage-girls-and-public-space-facilities-an-update