Written evidence submitted by In Her Place
1.1. This submission focuses on facilities for grassroots sports and how current provision disadvantages women and girls. It also considers how governance has so far not sufficiently addressed these inequalities.
1.2. The most common outdoor facilities for sport and activity in the UK are pitches, hard standing fenced pitches (MUGAs) as well as outdoor gyms and skateparks. All of these are on average 90% used by men and boys.
1.3. The barriers to women and girls using these facilities include design, administration and governance, as well as the types of facility provided. The biggest barrier however is probably safety. This significantly impairs their ability to use to these facilities, particularly during the winter months.
1.4. Good practice elsewhere suggest that a number of interventions have the potential to be effective; these include policy, activations and the design of spaces, but also reframing the idea of sports provision to include broader ideas of activity.
1.5. Recommendations include developing a gender mainstreaming approach to all future provision, making the safety of women and girls a key priority and making all aspects of governance gender equal.
2.1. As co-founder of the charity Make Space for Girls, I have spent four years researching the issue of how the design of outdoor spaces, including sports and leisure facilities tends to prioritise the needs of boys and young men over girls and young women. I now work as a consultant looking at gender mainstreaming in urban design more widely, but still including outdoor sports, activity and leisure facilities. My work on inequalities in provision includes research reviews, independent analysis and conducting engagement, in particular with teenage girls.
3.1. The majority of outdoor sports provision consists of pitches, with the predominant sport being football, alongside rugby (league and union), cricket and hockey. Additional facilities can include outdoor gyms and trim trails. In addition, there are fenced pitches / Multi-Use Games Areas (MUGAs), pump tracks and skateparks which, although usually seen as provision for teenagers, are in theory available to use for everyone.
3.2. Other provision can be more informal – e.g. the use of parks as running tracks or for walking or outdoor classes as well as for organised events such as Parkrun.
3.3. Because outdoor facilities like these are often the only free-to-use options available, they are particularly important in low income and deprived areas where access to paid activities (e.g. organised clubs or leisure centres) may be restricted.
3.4. Pitches in particular can often make up a significant proportion of greenspace in an area, therefore their usage patterns are important in considering overall access to greenspace.
4.1. Not enough research has been done on the usage of outdoor sports facilities. However, some initial work has demonstrated that, for the vast majority of provision, facilities are dominated men and boys, to the extent that on average, 90% of the users are male (Walker, 2024; Make Space for Girls, 2023).
4.2. This is the case for the use of pitches for organised team sport. In research I produced for Make Space for Girls, based on data from Playing Pitch Strategies across England, the teams which used the pitches were on average 90% male across football, rugby, cricket and hockey. The only sport which approached equality was hockey, but this constituted just 6% of the teams in total.
4.3. Engagement work with teenage girls tends to show that girls are more likely to play sport as part of an organised team than informally, which suggests that their use of non-bookable spaces such as playing fields is likely to be even more unequal.
4.4. Usage data for other facilities is limited. However, a citizen science project by Make Space for Girls demonstrated that pump tracks and skate parks were 85% used by boys and young men, while users of Multi-Use Games Areas were 92% male (Make Space for Girls, 2023). There is no gender-disaggregated data for the usage of outdoor gyms.
4.5. There are no outdoor free-to-use facilities which are predominantly used by women and girls.
5.1. The current situation is a clear inequality and needs to be addressed on this basis alone.
5.2. It impacts the physical health of women and girls, who are less able to access free-to-use facilities for sport and exercise. The positive effects of greenspace on mental health have been clearly demonstrated, so women’s lack of access to these spaces is particularly worrying.
5.3. The current rate of increase in girls and women playing grassroot sports is not sufficient to address these issues within a reasonable time frame, if at all (Walker, 2024).
6.1. Safety, or rather the absence of it, is the biggest barrier which prevents women and girls from using some outdoor sports facilities as well as more informal provision such as running in parks (Barker, 2022a).
6.2. Most outdoor sports facilities are situated in parks or on playing fields, and these are places where women and girls do not feel as safe as men.
6.3. The design of some spaces can also make them feel particularly unsafe or unwelcoming to women and girls. Examples include the high fences around MUGAs, facilities situated in isolated locations or a lack of lighting (Safer Parks Consortium 2023, Barker, 2022b).
6.4. The behaviour of men and boys can also make women feel unsafe and thereby lessen their participation. This happens in a number of ways.
6.5. Safety is an even greater barrier after dark and particularly restricts women’s access in the winter months. This is true for both formal facilities and informal activity such as running.
7.1. There are a range of other barriers which also prevent women and girls from using outdoor sports and leisure facilities. To give just some examples:
7.2. The framing of provision in terms of ‘grassroots sport’ may in itself result in inequality. As the data demonstrates, women are far less likely than men to participate in organised team sports, and more likely to take informal exercise or activity. A focus on sport, rather than broader definitions of activity, is likely to maintain the current inequality rather than addressing it.
7.3. The barriers that particular women face in specific places can be affected by a range of other factors including ethnic background, religion and socio-economic status, among others. For example, women and girls from non-white background are more likely to be the targets of sexual harassment (Scottish Mental Health Foundation, 2021). These intersectional issues need to be taken into consideration at every stage of the process.
8.1. This inequality in facilities and usage has not been sufficiently addressed by local authorities, sport governing bodies or government. The issue is rarely even considered nor is sex-disaggregated data required. Even where this has been collected, as is the case with some Playing Pitch Strategies, it is not analysed.
8.2. The requirements of the Equality Act and in particular the Public Sector Equality Duty are not being met. Equality Impact Assessments are infrequent and insufficient, and do not address the key inequality.
8.3. Governing bodies rarely collect usage data nor look at gender inequality in community facilities.
8.4. The provision of pitches is in part protected by law and mandated in the vast majority of Local Plans. This reproduces the inequality in every new development.
9.1. A policy of gender mainstreaming – the consideration of gender differences at every stage of the planning process – is the best way of improving this inequality. Where this has been applied abroad, for example in Vienna, Austria and Umeå, Sweden, this has resulted in innovation and changes which have improved women and girls’ access to facilities for grassroots sport, whether this is in policy, management or design.
9.2. For example, in Vienna, the design of hard court pitches in the city’s parks was changed to make them more accessible for women and girls. Fencing was only used when needed for safety, and big courts were split into multiple areas so that they could be used by more than one group at the same time. In Umeå, the rules regarding pitch booking were changed so that male teams did not dominate the best slots.
9.3. Both Umeå and Vienna both mandate that gender needs to be considered at every level of planning and infrastructure development, to ensure any new developments do not reproduce existing inequalities.
9.4. Some specific interventions have been demonstrated to make a difference. Examples include:
9.5. Safety for women and girls in parks is now being addressed in the UK, most notably in the Safer Parks Guidance (Safer Parks Consortium, 2023) which gives a number of specific recommendations to make parks and their associated facilities feel safer for women and girls.
9.6. Sport England’s Active Design Guidance is an example of a policy which foregrounds the need for safety for women and girls to make spaces and facilities inclusive and also looks at a broader range of activity rather than just sport.
9.7. However more research is still needed to identify which interventions are most effective in enabling women and girls to access outdoor facilities and greenspace in this country.
10.1. Both policy and design are crucial to changing this inequality.
10.2. The following policy changes should be put in place.
10.3. Further research is needed into which practical interventions are most effective and good practice in both the UK and abroad should be widely disseminated. This should be a priority for all governing bodies.
10.4. In particular, the safety of women and girls should be a central consideration for all future developments and the Safer Parks Guidance should be implemented in all green spaces.
10.5. However, barriers are always site and place specific and dependent on other intersectional factors, so meaningful engagement with local women and girls is essential for all projects, whether in policy or practice, with a particular focus on safety auditing.
10.6. Sport England and other policy bodies need to consider how the focus on sport, rather than wider activity, can reinforce existing inequalities in provision and funding.
For further information about points raised in this response, please contact Susannah Walker.
Barker, A., Holmes, G., Alam, R., Cape-Davenhill, L., Osei-Appiah, S. and Warrington Brown, S. 2022a. What Makes a Park Feel Safe or Unsafe? The views of women, girls and professionals in West Yorkshire. Leeds: University of Leeds.
Barker, A., Holmes, G., Cape-Davenhill, L., and Warrington Brown, S. 2022b. What do teenage girls like and dislike about park play spaces and multi-use games areas? Leeds: University of Leeds.
City of Vienna, 2013. Manual for Gender Mainstreaming in Urban Planning
and Urban Development.
Make Space for Girls 2023a, Research Background.
Make Space for Girls, 2023b. Parkwatch Report.
Office for National Statistics. 2022. Perceptions of personal safety and experiences of harassment, Great Britain: 16 February to 13 March 2022.
Safer Parks Consortium 2023 Safer Parks: Improving access for women and girls.
Scottish Mental Health Foundation. Nature: How connecting with nature benefits our mental health, 2021.
Sport England 2023. Active Design: Creating Active Environments through Planning and Design.
UN Women 2021, Prevalence and reporting of sexual harassment in UK public spaces. APPG for UN Women.
Vera-Gray, F. and Kelly, L. 2020. ‘Contested gendered space: public sexual harassment and women’s safety work’, International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, 44:4, 265-275.
Walker, S.; Cole, S; Goodenough, J.; Greenhalgh, N., Hussain, N.; Isa-Daniel, T.; Khan, A.; Montgomery, L. 2023. Greenspace & Us Part 2. JP053. Natural England
Walker, S. 2024. Pitches Report, Make Space for Girls.
Yorkshire Sport, Make Space for Us, 2022.