Teenage girls and public space/facilities : an update

[makespaceforgirls]

I posted a while back about how rubbish my local council's reaction was when I pointed out that all of their park facilities for teenagers where predominantly used by boys.

Things didn't get any better, so I did some research. And then I co-opted my feminist lawyer friend, and now we're a campaigning group, hoping to be a charity soon. So welcome to Make Space for Girls.

Our website is here, and that will also give you our Twitter. We're on Facebook too.

We'd hoped to launch ourself with a pilot project working with teenage girls, but COVID has put the brakes on that - schools have enough to think about right now as it is.

Even so, we've had an amazing reaction from everyone we've spoken to, and these range from academics to big public bodies to architects. And everyone both agrees and can't believes that the problem hasn't been noticed before now. Well, everyone except my local council. Who are now going to be quite embarrassed as they are about to be our case study of the town which spent £175k on equipment for boys, and nothing for girls.

We will keep you posted! And if anyone wants to know more, there is a contact form on the website, or DM me here.

Oh, @cheeseismydownfall I left out your other really interesting question.

I think my answer to that is that it's not about stereotyping, it's about facts. If 90% of the users of skate parks are boys, it's an equality problem. In truth, providing other facilities won't just benefit girls, but also some boys who don't fit into those groups. However sex is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act , so that's the way we have to challenge it.

@Thelnebriati There's a contact form on the website if that's easier:

makespaceforgirls.co.uk/contact/

This is brilliant.

I totally agree about the different approaches to sports between the sexes - BIL was a youth sports coach with our local council and he was used to coaching youth football teams and it was a huge change for him to teach "fun" classes. He didn't consider them real sport for a while because there was nothing to win, nobody to beat.

makespaceforgirls, your comment about competitive sport reminded me of another bugbear of mine, which is the (over) emphasis given to competitive sport in the secondary school curriculum. At DC's state secondary, PE is dominated by the usual candidates of rugby, football, hockey and netball, divided along the expected sex lines. By secondary school, the kids who are good at these sports are typically already playing them outside of schools, and get limited benefit from the watered down coaching of PE lessons. The kids who aren't good, unsurprisingly enough, suffer through the sessions getting very little from them other than yet more reinforcement of the message that they are crap at sport.

Given the general acceptance that the UK is in the middle of a health and obesity crisis I find this absolutely infuriating. Schools are uniquely placed to introduce children and young people to positive experiences of heath and wellbeing, yet they squander it time and again, placing more importance on their position in the inter-school sports tables than the health of the pupils who most need some help.

Of course, the impacts boys as well as girls, although my guess is that girls are particularly ill-served by a bog-standard school PE lesson.

Couldn't agree more and this is so useful. My town recently completed on a skatepark. As fantastic as it is, it's 99-100% males using it. Coupled with the lack of seating provision and absolutely no lighting it's a no-go area for our girls. What is annoying is that it is being lauded as an amazing provision for the young people of our town, defaulting of course to the "keeping the lads entertained".

I might use your article to harass my local councillors for action.

@makespaceforgirls you are spot on about what women do for physical activity. I HATED PE at school and did dare to mention that (and pointed out to a room of sporty women many of whom were PE teachers) that they were often the main disincentive to girls playing sport. DId not go down well.

WHen DD1 got to year 10 PE at school was split into the keen girls who did GCSE/sportsleaders, those who preferred dance and the rest were lumped into "core PE" - basically all the netball/hockey etc they had hated for years. I suggested that instead offering a choice of aerobics (wouldn't it be nice to be the newbie in a class and have learnt what a "grapevine" is at school), jogging, swimming/lifeguarding, body weight/HIIT/circuits. But no that would have required effort whereas standing around in a puffa coat blowing a whistle and gossiping with the other PE teacher was much easier.

Well done OP.

@SingingSands can you DM me and let me know where this is? And please feel free to share the document, that's exactly what it's there for.

@cheeseismydownfall and @Londonmummy66. Yes, school sport, it's a whole other battle. I would have loved to have been in the room when you told the PE teachers.

DD's school is actually not bad for this; although they do the usual sports, they try to include everyone. In Yr 7 they did a netball trip for the weekend which was for everyone who wanted to go, but only had two matches and loads of swimming, bowling and pizza eating, and DD came back much more positive about netball...

Well done, OP. Carry on with the great work.

@PotholeParadies

The research section is really good, and my goodness, they're absolutely right.

I hadn't ever thought about it before, but as a teenage girl, I did start being more careful about using little football pitches. I loved football but I stopped using a leisure area because it was next to the local skateboard park where crowds of male yoof gathered, who tried to show off in front of their friends by sexually harassing any nearby girls.

All the girls did, thinking about it. We preferred to play football in the street because there were nearby adults.

I can't believe I've never realised all this before. We just adjusted our lives around abusive teen boys without articulating why were doing it.

Scary isn't it when you realise just how much we, as women, unconsciously make decisions to keep ourselves safe without even realising it.

This is brilliant! Thanks so much for doing this! The original MN thread is seared into my brain, and I spent close to an hour one day trying to find it so I could link to it in a consultation for a new park that is going to be created in my area. Talk had started turning away from green spaces and community meeting places to "Maybe we could build a skate park??? Wouldn't that be just the greatest?" so I made sure to put forward an alternative perspective.

I will definitely make use of the resources on your website if further public consultations on my local park are held.

Thanks again!

Good luck with it, sounds fab.

I do think it is somewhat area-specific.
Our local skatepark has a huge mix of boys and girls- yes there are more boys!- but DD (16) skates there with friends and it's very welcoming.
That's more with the skateboarders though, the scooterers are all chavvy 13 year old boys who she says can be intimidating.

If anyone is going to build a sodding skate park, it needs to be positioned so a medium sized group of teens (which 9/10 is mostly male with a couple of current girlfriends awkwardly hanging out on the fringes) don't have a vantage point over the rest of the area.

I've really started thinking about how people, i.e. women, react to leisure layouts, instead of just accepting current designs as how the world is. How much skating is ever done on them? Mostly they seem to be used for drunken loitering. It becomes a no-go area for lone women and girls, and if you were with another girl, then it was homophobia time.

One particular one I encountered was at the edge of a flat community green space, and it didn't matter how far away you were, the boys at the skate park saw you and shouted stuff.

The nicest park I ever used had plenty of artificial hillocks in between equipment sections. Could be an idea for the dratted skate parks. Also would provide sound insulation for the rare occasion someone actually does any skateboarding.

Well done OP! I remember your thread and I think I posed on it.

posted - not posed :)

That's great. I was a teen in the 70s and used to spend a lot of time in local parks, hanging out with friends. In those days there were park wardens, which was a pain when we wanted to use the playground equipment and were chucked out because we were too old, but also meant a certain level of safety.

I'm not sure whether girls could hang out in my local park without coming under the scrutiny of the local young males who use the skate ramp.

Great work OP!

OP, for the time and effort you're putting into this.

Excellent initiative.

Will walk past my local park later and have a recce.

Possible funding might come from here OP

www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk/

This is such a fantastic report. I agree with PPs about how much better spaces are where there isn't essentially an "observation platform".

There's a very small park near us that seems to incorporate lots of different spaces well. At the top of the hill is a toddler play area which is fenced, a little bit further down is a more adventure area which is probably suitable up to early teens, which has fixed picnic benches and bbq spots, and then gym style equipment at the bottom of the hill, with more benches.

There are paths running through and around these spaces and crucially there is planting between them so you can't sit in one spot and observe. It also ticks the boxes of wide entrances and good lighting mentioned in your report, and attracts a pretty even mix of ages of kids of both sees as well as families and couples.

Really interesting stuff, OP.

I’ve always been into competitive sport, so I have to say I do struggle with the concept that provision for girls needs to necessarily be somehow non competitive. I’m not sure which of the chicken or egg comes first, and if girls end up preferring non competitive stuff for reasons that could be addressed, rather than just accepting it as a given. I don’t know the answer, but it’s an interesting question, for sure. Which we will only get to answer by asking girls, so am fully behind the approach!

@Sophoclesthefox the problem with competitive sports is that the there is nothing to motivate the unfit/ uncoordinated/ rubbish at sports kids. Some of us will never win no matter how hard we try!
It applies to girls and boys but boys seem to have more alternatives such as playground football.

Such a fantastic idea.

I'm really keen to get more young girls into climbing as it's one of the few sports where they tend to outperform boys of their age. I was thinking a bouldering wall could be cool but I can immediately see (from my own experience of testosterone-fueled climbing gyms) how it could quickly be dominated by boys.

I think getting the design right will be really key. For example you could create a bouldering wall that's more of a puzzle (e.g. with numbers you have to follow) and paint it in a way that feels colourful and fun (rather than black and yellow extreme sports) to put the boys off from using it as some kind of macho muscle contest.

But all in all I think you're right that it's mainly about the (revolutionary!) act of actually asking girls what they want. Great stuff.