ABSTRACT
Women’s and girls’ teams do not get the support that men’s and boys’ teams do. Although Title IX was passed thirty years ago in 1972, societal norms and values continue to be defined by dominant groups in some of America’s major city parks. Although Los Angeles created the first municipal playground department in the United States in 1904, the region, southern California, was the site of two lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of girls aged 5-18 years of age. In 1998 and 2000 the ACLU filed two lawsuits on behalf of girls seeking equal access to playing fields in Los Angeles and Montebello respectively. West Valley Girls’ Softball was a twenty-nine-year league of 500 girls who were denied access to the same facilities as were made available to boys’ baseball leagues. In this case the gatekeeper was the City of Los Angeles Parks and Recreation Department. Girls were temporarily allotted inferior and makeshift school fields to which they and their parents carried their own dirt in order to render them playable. The City not only provided permanent fields with appropriate amenities to the boys’ teams, they also sponsored three leagues. Alleging gender-based discrimination, the ACLU expanded the case to all girls city-wide. The Los Angeles City Council finally responded by adopting a ‘Raise the Bar’ programme, a first step to providing equal access to participation opportunities and facilities for girls (ACLU 2001).
