A year ago, the executive launched a plan to build 5,000 local facilities: skate park, multisports stadium, weight training areas, open to all.

But, in reality, who will use them?

Of course, the subject is not new.

"The development of public space has responded to human subjects", reminds AFP Edith Maruéjouls, geographer of the genre, who worked on the subject in Gironde several years ago and showed that these places , like the playground, were more than 90% occupied by men.

"The first time we arrived, with three girls, and we said + we're coming to play football + the boys replied: + anything girls, it's not playing football! +, you go behind on the small ground", says Leila Marhi, of the association Sine Qua Non, which promotes equality in the public space and fights against sexist and sexual violence.

"When are you finishing?"

This association, "to conquer the street", benefits from slots reserved in Paris and in the suburbs.

This is how, in conjunction with the facilitators of a social center, little girls and teenagers come and kick the ball at the citystade Reverdy in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, under the instructions of their coach, Fanta, 16, who " wants to pass on his knowledge of football".

The older ones, aged 13/14 like Fatou, Yayé, Heidi or Maeva, now play in clubs and the little ones fight over them to have them in their teams.

For a year and a half, the association has made its mark.

This does not prevent less than an hour after the start of training, that some young boys are stamping their feet, sticking their heads, and launching a timid "when are you finishing?".

At the end of the session, boys are integrated into the teams.

But, without a supervisor, there would hardly ever be any girls playing on this pitch.

For Cécile Ottogali, lecturer in sports history, these facilities are "a typical example of good intentions which may not reach their targets", namely to be open to all, she recently explained during a symposium of the National Observatory of Physical Activity and Sedentariness (Onaps).

“Local authorities must observe this, measure it and put in place systems that allow regulation,” she recommends.

"Stopping the Citystadiums"

In free access, "the practice is too exclusively male", notes Pierre Rabadan, sports assistant for the town hall of Paris.

"It's the support for use that will make this change," he explains to AFP, hence the aid to associations in football, basketball or handball to bring girls on the grounds.

Some equipment is also renovated by artists, and "according to associations and users, a less austere field with an artistic signature leads players to respect the field and to open up to mixed practices", he explains.

The issue of lighting, the arrangement of equipment in the public space, also play a role.

Edith Maruéjouls, she is categorical: "we must stop making citystades!".

She notes that attempts like outdoor fitness "didn't work".

For her, "it is necessary + to make a sporting body and to make number +".

And there's a long way to go for women who "decorate space from birth" and "never qualify as a sporting body."

In "the body of women, the battle of intimacy", the professor of political science, Camille Froidevaux-Metterie, takes up the American philosopher Iris Marion Young and her text "Throwing like a girl" ("throw like a girl") : women "apprehend their bodies as an object whose appearance must be taken care of, a necessary tool in romantic and maternal relationships, never as a capacity for implementation or a power of realization", she writes.

© 2022 AFP