Imogen Clark: 'How can teenage girls be active when they have no facilities?'

In advance of Active London – London Sport’s annual conference – Make Space for Girls co-founder Imogen Clark has written a column on the lack of outdoor facilities available to teenage girls.

If there’s one thing that we all learned from lockdown, it’s the value of being outdoors. Teenage girls felt this as much as anyone, with 84 percent saying they would make more effort to get outside once lockdown had ended. But where do they go?

On paper, there are plenty of places out there for teenagers to gather and be active – MUGAs (Multi Use Games Areas), skate parks, BMX tracks and pitches. But the reality is that these tend to be dominated by boys, resulting in girls feeling a sense of displacement and that they don’t belong.

Sadly, this is also a view which is often reinforced by the boys who are there. Tellingly, research shows that girls are more active in spaces when MUGAs and skate parks aren’t present. Yet, they keep getting built.

Safety is a big barrier too. A study found that two thirds of girls had been sexually harassed in public space, and 35 percent had been hassled while wearing school uniform. Whilst a Girlguiding survey found that 80 percent of all girls and young women feel unsafe when they’re out on their own. No wonder that public spaces can often seem like unwelcoming places for girls and young women. Recent research coming out from Glasgow found that just 20 percent of girls said that they felt comfortable in their chosen park.

To make positive change, we need to first understand the existing issues. Ultimately, it’s discriminatory, but everyone under the age of 18 has a right to play under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

But one of the most crucial elements is health. Girls are less