Thread by @drrachelhewitt

Right, I’ve been doing some reading (and writing) about young women’s experiences in public space, and it’s made me so angry and upset that I have to share a digest with you all.

Globally, during adolescence, ‘girls’ worlds shrink, while boys’ expand’. One study finds that the map of 14-yo girls’ day-to-day movements is 2/5 the size of that of their 11-yo selves, and only 1/3 the size of 14-yo male peers’ movements.

The shrinking of teenage girls’ access to public space correlates to reduction in girls’ ability to exercise. In Texas, teenage girls do 65% less physical activity than boys. Girls drop out of sport clubs in adolescence at far higher rates than boys. This sets a trend for life.

Numerous factors influence girls’ shrinking access to public space. Some are to do with gender roles in families. A study in rural Australia found that boys tend to be given outdoor chores (mowing the lawn), whereas girls are given indoor ones (washing up etc).

Girls in larger families are less likely to visit parks – probably because parents are less able to chaperone them, and there is a stronger expectation that girls, rather than boys, require chaperoning around public space.

But the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR that deters teenage girls from public places is... the presence of men. Teenage girls in western Australia say openly that ‘they’d use [public] spaces more if boys weren’t around.’

Park features that attract boys and men – such as ‘organized sport settings’ like courts – are repeatedly shown to deter girls. Teenage girls are often seen to gravitate towards playgrounds – the only area of parks consistently populated more by adult women than men.

Girls themselves report 2 main reasons for avoiding spaces dominated by men. The 1st is self-conciousness. The majority of teenage girls interviewed have experience of being taunted by male peers (and male teachers) for their appearance and sporting competence.

But the principal reason is FEAR. Australian teenage girls describe parks as the LEAST safe public space, followed by streets, then public transport. 60% of 13yo girls in Stockholm say they are scared in their own neighbourhood.

In South Africa, girls label over 58% of public spaces ‘unsafe’/ ‘very unsafe’, & areas that boys find ‘extremely safe’ (including schools) girls describe as ‘very unsafe’. Sometimes girls fear is about injury, & girls care more about the maintenance of public spaces like parks.

But mostly girls fear violence and sexual crimes from boys and men. And, across all the studies I’ve read, the teenage girls who were interviewed had direct experience, or had been witnesses to, harassment, stalking, intimidation and assaults from boys and men.

Teenage girls have coping mechanisms for these constraints on their access to public space. Some report trying to behave assertively, to not show fear. In parks, girls are reluctant to engage in exercise & prefer to ‘walk, sit or lay down’ in innocuous places, such as under trees

In public swimming pools, girls try to make themselves less visible – by swimming in t-shirts, covering themselves with towels until the last moment, or hiding themselves among friends. They try to not draw attention to themselves, by jumping in, messing around or ‘having fun’.

But many deal with these constraints by simply avoiding public space altogether.Many girls explicitly avoid parks & courts. Many retreat to their bedrooms, where girls spend much more time than boys. One girl refers to her room as ‘the only place in the world where she felt safe’

I find this heart-breaking & enraging. I knew from my own experience that women have different responses to public space than men, but I thought I’d become hardened. But reading these studies, in which adolescent girls experience their world & possibilities contracting, is 💔

There are interventions that can help teenage girls to feel more at home in public space, &, by being able to exercise, to be more at home in their bodies. @CCriadoPerez’s wonderful Invisible Women describes interventions made by park planners in Sweden to encourage girls’ access

Better lighting has been shown to attract teenage girls to parks (and, interestingly, to deter teenage boys 🤔), and this describes similar environmental changes to make public space more hospitable to women endvawnow.org/en/articles/38…

Similarly, there are efforts to improve teenage girls’ experience of school sport: more time to get changed & giving girls better choice of sports (girls report how boys are encouraged to ‘go outside’, while they are confined to ‘dancing studios’). theguardian.com/education/2017…

BUT one of the MOST effective interventions is to give girls access to spaces without men. It’s sad that it’s necessary, but allowing girls to participate in single-sex sports is repeatedly shown to increase participation and enjoyment.

Women-only sessions in public spaces like swimming pools allows girls to participate without harassment. Martha Brady shows how facilitating girls’ sports in single-sex spaces can be a way of ‘bringing girls into the public sphere’. jstor.org/stable/4000550…

I used to be a bit jokey about the question, ‘women, what would you do if there was a curfew for men?’ But reading this material has made me realise how women are ourselves operating under a curfew. I’m sure many of us feel similarly to teenage girls retreating to our bedrooms.

This material has made me realise how important it is to grasp the extent to which women’s access to PUBLIC space is curtailed – the impact this has on our lives & health & happiness – & to devise ways for girls & women to take up occupation of space they have a right to be in. /