Abstract
ABSTRACTPhysical activity in Canada mirrors the gender gap observed globally, with boys more likely than girls to meet recommended guidelines. While a growing body of research has examined the relationships between environmental factors and children’s physical activity levels, much less is known about how environments play a role in gendering physical activity. In this paper, using a material feminist approach to environmental affordances, we explore girls’ perspectives on the features of their everyday environments that support or inhibit their uptake of physical activities in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. As part of the larger multi-method Spatial Temporal Environment and Activity Monitoring (STEAM) project, we held six focus groups with girls ages 10–12 years from rural, suburban, and urban schools. Through inductive thematic analysis, we identified two themes: (1) Outdoor matter matters for physical activity, and (2) Social levers and liabilities shape physical activity affordances. Our results indicate that some girls may be better afforded physical activity opportunities by providing proximate outdoor play in spaces with natural elements and diverse infrastructure, coupled with efforts to alleviate social liabilities (e.g., care responsibilities) and leverage social supports (e.g., peers). Based on our findings, we put forward naturalised schoolyards as a potentially gender-sensitive physical activity intervention. This study contributes to identifying the gendered ways in which environments may differentially ‘afford’ children opportunities for physical activity, thereby opening the way for developing more gender-equitable interventions.
Highlights
Physical activity (PA) in Canada mirrors the gender gap observed globally, with boys more likely than girls to meet the recommended guidelines for PA (Colley et al 2011; Hallal et al 2012)
Outdoor matter matters for physical activity This theme reflects how girls in our study overwhelmingly preferred being active in, as Alexa put it, ‘the outernet,’ meaning ‘not in like closed spaces, like, I like to be outdoors’ where it was possible to do activities like ‘rollerblade and bike.’
Taken together, our results indicate that girls may be better afforded PA opportunities by providing proximate outdoor play in spaces with natural elements and diverse infrastructure, coupled with efforts to alleviate social liabilities and leverage social supports
Summary
Physical activity (PA) in Canada mirrors the gender gap observed globally, with boys more likely than girls to meet the recommended guidelines for PA (Colley et al 2011; Hallal et al 2012). Among Canadian youth ages 5-11 years, only 9 percent of girls meet the recommended 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous PA per day, as compared to 18 percent of boys (Statistics Canada, 2015). Both boys’ and girls’ PA participation drops off in teenage years, the proportion of girls meeting PA guidelines falls to just 3 percent—making this group the least likely of all youth to achieve the health benefits of PA (Statistics Canada, 2015). Numerous quantitative studies examining this relationship have highlighted the influence of environmental characteristics, such as walkability, park and facility access, and land use, on children’s PA levels (Davison and Lawson 2006; Tucker et al 2009; McGrath et al 2015; Mitchell et al 2016)
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