F E AT U R E
1. The work in Einseidler Park, Vienna showed girls used the park more when hammocks were installed. © Isabel Fox & Harry Groom/ Make Space for Girls
Making Space for Girls 1.
A new charity is challenging park designers, councils and managers to create better parks and remove the barriers which prevent teenage girls from using public spaces designed for young people. Susannah Walker
Making Space for Girls
Sometimes discrimination hides in plain sight, impossible to see until it’s pointed out, and then impossible to ignore. As a feminist and the mother of a teenage girl, I’d never even noticed the way that park spaces catered almost entirely for teenage boys. But when it was pointed out to me, I was furious. The problem is set out in all too many play and green space strategies, which define facilities for teenagers as being ‘MUGAs, skate parks and BMX tracks. All of these are almost entirely used by boys. Which isn’t to say that girls don’t want to play football or skateboard, but for a whole heap of reasons, including their design and the behaviour of the boys who do use them, they don’t often get a look in.
Make Space for Girls was founded not just out of a burning sense of injustice, but because the current state of affairs goes against the law. Co-founder Imogen Clark, a solicitor for many years, pointed out that under the Public Sector Equality Duty, any public body must proactively consider how any decisions they make may impact on disadvantaged groups, and how to redress those inequalities. We had identified clear-cut discrimination, and councils were legally required to consider it. On that basis, we had a campaign, and Make Space for Girls – after quite a bit of research – came into being. We are a charity focussed on the fact that parks and other public spaces need to be designed with teenage girls in mind. This isn’t about painting things pink or telling girls to be more confident. We want landscape architects, councils, developers and equipment manufacturers to plan teenage spaces which are more creative and inclusive, and so work for everyone - including the very many teenage boys for whom the current provision isn’t working either.
This matters for a whole host of other reasons apart from just the law. Inactivity in teenage girls is a serious health problem, with only 10% getting the recommended 60 minutes of activity a day, but somehow this is never connected with the fact that they have nothing to be active on. Their mental health is worse than that of boys, and it’s proven that going out into green spaces improves wellbeing. Teenage girls also have a right to play. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child includes everyone under the age of 18, but older girls are often forgotten. One problem is that teenage play, to adults, often looks like ‘loitering’ or ‘hanging around’, something to be stamped out rather than encouraged. There’s also a fundamental question of social justice. To be in public space is to be part of the community, but all too often our places tell girls that they are not welcome, that they should be at home instead. “And that’s something they unfortunately might interpret as a lesson for life.” 25
