Date: 1970s
Gilli Salvat
I was a youth worker in Caxton House in the mid–1970s working in a large community and youth work centre. My colleague at the Sobell Centre and I both came to the realisation that our clubs were mostly used by boys and young men. Girls and young women usually came to watch the boys playing games, leant on the walls of the club chatting and were not involved in the activities. This was the situation in most youth clubs in London and around the country. We decided to try and change it and give young women a chance to progress their own interests.
When we consulted the young women, they came up with a list of activities both educational and sporting that they would like to try, including five a side football, music tuition, discussions and education groups on the issues that affected them as young women. So we created a Girls’ Night — a young women–only space at our clubs. We knew from experience that young men would immediately take over any of the activities that the young women had requested. This sharing of the clubs’ resources and time resulted in the young men becoming angry, violent and abusive and put our first few Girls’ Nights under siege. Sympathetic male youth workers were called in to secure the clubs and work with the boys outside the premises.
Talking to colleagues in various parts of the country, we found out that the issue of sharing space and resources to accommodate girls’ and young women’s needs in mixed clubs was a difficult one. We also discovered that youth service funding for girls was a fraction of the funding for boys. The youth work criteria at the time was about keeping young men ‘off the streets’ i.e. the fear of violence and disorder in the street. At the time in London, only one third of youth workers were women and they needed support to put the needs of girls into practice. We began to organise, first in London and then all over the country, as far as Edinburgh.
The Organisation of Work with Girls & Young Women was set up in 1987 with a worker and an office in Manchester. The idea of sharing space and resources with young women and girls slowly began to take hold of youth service thinking.
The principle of sharing space and resources between the sexes, and people from diverse ethnic or religious backgrounds, in youth work and leisure activities is an accepted part of our lives now. It is a part of the training and development for workers in these services. Who now questions women-only spaces in swimming pools, gyms, exercise classes, sports and youth and community services?
Reprinted with permission from Write Women into History: published by Hackney Howlers