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Tile: Empowering women in the outdoors: Why the white-hot interest?
AUthor: Sarah Barker
Abstract: article that reflects on the new trend of women-only trips, classes, social media campaigns?
http://www.startribune.com/women-in-the-outdoors-x2009-why-all-the-white-hot-interest/431595953/Title: Muslim women in sports
Author: Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_women_in_sport9 – Should outdoor sports facilities be supported by specialized technicians or not?
Specialized technician can be with any doubt of great help for the disable person to carry out his/her sport activity. Nonetheless, outdoor sport activities that can also be done autonomously should be envisaged, for 2 reasons. First of all, always needing a technician puts a not neglectable organizational and economic constraint on the practice of the sport activity, both for the practitioner and for the institute providing the specialized technician. Secondly, it can create a psychological and social barrier: the presence of the trainer creates a visible differentiation compared with the not disable people that do not need it and it fosters the dependency of the disable person on external help rather then being an occasion of empowerment and independency.
8 – Will the development and adaptation of outdoor sports facilities be the best response to meet the needs of people with disabilities to promote sports activity?
Promoting disable-friendly outdoor sport facilities is a basic step to include people with disabilities in sport activities. Nonetheless, the mere infrastructure can do few if it does not come together with a psychological support and a social textile free of prejudice and stereotypes on disable people. For example, the women writing the above-mentioned report on the inclusion of women with disabilities denounce the general trend depicting them as a homogeneous group, without any differentiation on the grounds of gender or other identifying characteristics (age, sexual preference, origin, past experiences, etc.). This causes a stereotype image that harms their identity and self-esteem.
There are many measures to enhance the practice of sport by people with disabilities beyond and together the refurbishing of disable-friendly venues. Providing occasion for social bonding and training the trainers in understanding disable people’s needs and finding the right measures to encourage the person to persist and grow in that activity are essential to ensure the persistence. Adapting the sport activity and offering a range of choice is also essential for the disable person to find the conditions that fit best with his/her disabilities.7 – Is it necessary to promote gendered activities and facilities for disabled people?
Gender friendly activity for disabled people are a very important driver to improve the physical, psychological and social conditions of women with disabilities. The stigma related to disable people is reinforced in the case of women by stereotypical views linked to gender, which portray women and girls with disabilities as sick, helpless, childlike, dependent, incompetent and asexual, greatly limiting our options and opportunities in life. As reported in the CBM publication on the inclusion of women with disabilities, women and girls with disabilities are recognised as having less access to education, lower outcomes from education, lower employment rate and lower financial stability than men with disabilities.
For all these reasons, it is important to recognise this obstacle related to gender when designing facilities and activities for disable people. Nonetheless in case of restricted resources, before selecting such an action it can be important to weigh the benefits that such an action would bring to disable women against the disadvantages it creates for the excluded male disables context by context.6 – Must we design customized environments or simply promote accessibility?
Creating customized environments risks to increase the feeling of exclusion and discrimination of disabled people. For this reason, it is important that customization occurs in the planning phase, while gathering the needs to be satisfied through the space, and not in the final product. The final product should embed the specific needs without making the use of that products exclusive to people having those needs. On the contrary, the products/space/tools will be as more inclusive as they succeed in taking into account the specific needs of the different types of disabilities while looking appealing for the broader public.
5 – What kind of approaches adjusted to different disability conditions?
Customized approaches for every type of disabilities are essential to fully understand the needs of the people suffering of that disability and providing an answer. For inclusive places to be built, it is important that the final answer is able to embed all the different needs that have been detected. One of the keys to provide an inclusive answer is to differentiate the type of activities and equipment proposed. For example, an inclusive playground for children can provide with multiplay equipment based on different senses: some games are tactile, some other produces sounds, some other are based on visual stimulus. Another example is to provide for equipment that can be used with different level of interaction.
On this topic, a growing number of companies offer inclusive solutions for outdoor physical activities. Here an example: http://www.inclusiveplay.com/designing-inclusive-play-solutions/4 – Is it enough to eliminate physical barriers or are there other areas, namely, socially and culturally, that we need to consider?
As mentioned in the answer before, accessibility must be felt but not seen. This statement derives from the recognition that barriers are not only physical but also social, cultural and psychological. Besides physical accessibility, people’s assumptions, body ideals and a lack self confidence among people with disabilities are often the biggest barriers for diversity.
To this extent, only focusing on eliminating a physical barrier without considering the wider emotional and social aspects related to it can generate further discrimination and isolation.
For this reason, participatory diagnostic tool must focus not only on the identification of the physical barriers, but also on the feelings and perceptions of disable people in the interaction with already existing disable-friendly infrastructures or measures.3 – The design and construction of leisure and outdoor sports spaces should contemplate what kind of situations to be effectively accessible to all?
A leisure and outdoor sport site that wants to be truly inclusive for disabled people must carefully consider all the needs the different types of disabilities. In fact, a place that only take into consideration some barriers for a type of disabilities and some barriers for another type of disabilities, keep on being not accessible for nor both types of disabilities.
Another aspect is the level of inclusivity of the space. In order to make it fully inclusive and reduce the feeling of isolation that disable people often experience, the space should be appealing for both disable and non-disable people. How? For example, it should be placed in a central position where also non-disable people are encouraged to pass by and interact. The equipment should be thought to be used also by non-disable people. The equipment and the relative instructions and signals should not create barrier in the use of the equipment nor hurt the sensitivity of disabled people. With the words of the Musholm sport center’s director Henrik Ib Jørgensen states, “Accessibility must be felt but not seen,”.
On this link it can be found the article about the Musholdm centre, a very successful indoor and outdoor sport centre in Danemark that is fully accessible for disabled people https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/14/what-disability-accessible-city-look-like2 – What kind of issues should a diagnostic tool include to identify barriers in the urban space what items should be included?
A very idea-generating and participatory diagnostic tool to identify barriers for disable in urban spaces is collective walks with disabled people, people taking care of them, urban planners and possibly also with sport trainers and people external to disabilities. Engaging these last 2 targets is essential as to raise awareness of trainers and the wider public about discriminations and barriers embedded in the urban spaces. In order to engage the wider public, an activity could be organised in which people with no disabilities are invited to walk around the selected urban space by “dressing” the different types of disabilities: go around on a wheelchair, walk with blind eyes, etc. A similar initiative takes place every year at Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan and Piacenza. It is called “Wear my clothes” (“mettiti nei miei panni” the Italian title) and it achieves resounding success among students and the academic body (https://www.cattolicanews.it/mettiti-nei-miei-panni-anche-a-piacenza). In 2017 the initiative also proposed a workshop where participants could experience limited hearing abilities.
6. What are the local and national policies and incentives in this aspect?
As it can be read on the Women and Sport report by the UN, many international conferences have been organized on the topic of women and sport and every of them developed tools and recommendation in order to strengthen women participation in sport.
Back in 1995, the Beijing Platform for Action, adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women, provided important policy recommendations on women, gender equality and sport already. Among the other aspects, the Platform calls for the creation and support of programmes in the education system, workplace and community to make opportunities to participate in sport and physical activity available to girls and women of all ages, on the same basis as they are made available to men and boys.In 2002, in view of the Third World Conference on Women and Sport the Montreal Tool Kit was developed as a reference manual containing 20 tools to help women activists working to increase women’s participation in sports.
More recently, women inclusion in sport activities has been recognised has being a driver for the achievement of many of the SDG goals.
Nonetheless, the need to ensure the same access to sport for mothers has still not been fully addressed by international conferences. National policies and especially ground initiatives seem to be more advanced in the topic.An example of a national initiatives is The Get Out, Get Active program from the Queensland Government, in Australia. It provides funding for projects that will deliver community-based sport and recreation activities that increase opportunities for participation by women and girls who are either currently inactive, or would otherwise benefit from further participation. (https://www.qld.gov.au/recreation/sports/funding/organisations/getoutgetactive)
5. Please provide dood examples and initiatives. What are the facilities and services offered at the local level?
Among the many initiatives organised worldwide to engage women and their children in sport, in Australia a 3-month programme delivered enjoyable fitness activities in local parks for women and their families.
Always in Australia, Active Mums Noosa” offered 19 group activities over the 20 weeks including activities such as mums and bubs yoga, pilates and box fit. The popularity of this program can in part be attributed to the involvement of the target group in the program planning. A large number of mums completed an online survey indicating their preferences for days, times and location of program activities. The council also involved new mums’ groups in focus group style sessions to provide input into the program planning.Yoga with babies has gained more and more popularity. Besides allowing the mother to take care of their children while doing sport, the camaraderie of postnatal classes often helps offset the sometimes isolating and disorienting stage of early parenthood.
In France, a remarkably high number of gyms advertises courses for mother and children with experienced personnel taking care of the physical activities of the two.The growing interest in the issue can be observed by the number of blogs and articles that can be found online on how to combine childcare and sport. Femme Actuelle Magazine, for example, offers an article with a list of sports that mothers can comfortably practice with children (https://www.femmeactuelle.fr/enfant/enfants/quel-sport-pratiquer-avec-mon-enfant-2024875)
4. Do you think is an incentive to practice a sport activity together with children?
Practicing a sport with children can be an incentive for mothers to practice a sport. At the same time, there factors as children age, mothers’ flexibility and reaction to stress, welcoming or restricting environment and children’s temperament that highly influence the choice of the mothers to take part to such an activity. Some of these factors can be tackled by organising these activities in spaces that are sufficiently large for the 2 groups not to bother each other but at the same time keep on being on eye sight, having a good soundproofing. Encouraging the adoption of some informal rules to be followed during the session is also key to make the experience pleasant for every participant while at the same time ensuring enough flexibility for mothers to take care of their children in case it is needed.
3. Do you think the figure of the partner is focal to allow the woman to have a correct access to the sport practice in the evening time?
The support of the partner is essential to allow women to attend evening sport, both for the concrete help in taking care of the children and for the psychological wellbeing of the couple. On the other side, for all those cases in which partner’s support does not come spontaneously from the beginning, campaign raising awareness on the positive effects on health of an active life and the accessibility of the sport venue (in terms of distance and of fee) are crucial to engage women in getting started.
2. Do you consider a good strategy to optimize the family time by scheduling the project simultaneously with the children ‘s activity?
As in the case of childcare, organizing children’s activities at the same time of women activities can help those women with young children to take part in the activity. This measure can meet more easily the quest of trust by part of the parents. On the other side, mothers and children could experience difficulties in finding their preferred activities in the same time slot in case the offer is not very varied.
It is important that also fathers are offered the possibilities to do sport at the same time of their children. This would indirectly benefit women that wouldn’t need to take care of the children in that range of time and so will have more free time, that they could decide to spend in doing sport.
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