July 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 36

SOCIAL EQUITY

Parks for All
Parks in Vancouver seek to welcome and serve people all along the gender spectrum
By Danielle Taylor

A

central working principle of parks and recreation is equal access for
all, and agencies have done an admirable job of providing high-quality services for people in their communities regardless of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religious identity, physical ability or other factors
contributing to diversity. But what about gender? In most places, gender is accommodated on a purely binary system, with " male " and " female " offered as
the only options on forms, in public restrooms and changing rooms, on sports
teams and through innumerable other outlets. However, gender identity isn't as
easily defined as that for many people, and the traditional system leaves many
people feeling excluded or unwelcome.
Recognizing this, the Vancouver
Board of Parks and Recreation in
British Columbia recently convened
a team of advocates representing the
city's trans and gender-variant community to advise them on ways to
better serve this historically neglected population, and the group spent
the better part of a year assessing
the community's needs and ways

34

Parks & Recreation

the Vancouver Department of Parks,
Recreation and Culture could improve its services. In April, the Trans
and Gender-Variant Inclusion Working Group (TGVIWG) presented its
findings in a report titled " Building a
Path to Parks & Recreation for All:
Reducing Barriers for Trans & Gender-Variant Community Members "
(http://bit.ly/tgviwg). This docu-

| J U LY 2 0 1 4 | W W W. N R PA . O R G

ment identifies barriers that limit
equal access to park and recreation
services for members of the trans
and gender-variant community and
offers recommendations for park operations that will improve the park
experience for this community and
increase their ability to enjoy Vancouver's many public green spaces
and opportunities for active living.
" We are all assigned a gender at
birth, " says Metha Brown, co-chair
of the TGVIWG. " Some of us come
to discover, often very early on, that
our true gender does not match our
assigned gender. Many recreational
programs only have highly gendered
options, which can be unwelcoming
or unsafe for trans folks. This means
that members of our community
who could really benefit from well-



July 2014 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of July 2014 - Parks & Recreation

July 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 1
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