INTRODUCTION

Since the mid-1990s, Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) organisations have used sport as a method to recruit youth who are labelled as vulnerable or disadvantaged.¹ In addition to and sometimes in conjunction with sport, these programs provide educational curricula catered to the various issues faced by participants. Sport, Gender and Development (SGD) emerged from the SDP movement with Brady & Banu Khan’s report exploring the relationship between the SDP movement and girls’ participation.² During this period, thoughts of improved gender relations related to girls’ inclusion in sport entered the discourse.^3-5 These observations led Saavedra to question the extent female participation in gender-sensitive SDP programs “has the power to upend what is seen/presented as ‘normal’ and [to] become a major force to social change beyond sport by challenging gender norms”.⁴

Top-down donors and SDP organisations were quick to note, or assume, progressive gender-related outcomes. For example, Read and Bingham, respectively representing Right to Play and UK Sport, point to anecdotal evidence of SDP contributing to the Millennium Development Goal of ‘promoting gender equality and empowering women’.⁵ But researchers have been cautionary. They propose further research that explores how circumstances and specific sports may result in positive gender-related outcomes, acknowledges sport’s historical baggage as a colonial tool, and notes the North/South power dynamics that underpin SDPs placement within the neo-liberal world order.^6-8Other concerns include how the ‘girl’ SDP participant is framed as either ‘empowered’ or a ‘victim’, with arguments that the SDP movement may draw heavily from Third Wave feminist and post-feminist critiques, resulting in a general and limited conceptualisation of gender and thus gender equality.⁹

The current SDP paradigm includes the ‘girling of SDP’, whereby there is an increased presence of female participants, specific SGD agenda’s targeting girls, and more research being conducted on the complexities of gender within sport and SDP as a global industry.^10,11 Providing a critical review of SDP literature, Chawansky exposes how girls within SDP fall into two categories as organisations either ‘allow’ girls to play in a mixed-gender environment, or ‘empower’ girls in a single-sex program.¹¹ She argues SDP takes a Western ontological perspective and consequently, the SDP movement is missing an opportunity to make concrete social change. Asking for a reimagining of gender relations within mixed-gender SDP programs, she suggests researchers and practitioners look beyond the Western hegemonic framing of gender as binary to consider the structural restrictions and realities of girls’ positions in SDP, particularly when their involvement is positioned within boys’ social privilege and a masculine-oriented SDP structure. Adding to this, Hayhurst et al. found female participants challenge gender norms in a self-defence SGD program in Uganda, but at the cost of experiencing emotional abuse.¹² As such, the cost attached to participants’ ‘increased self-esteem, confidence and self-defence skills’ that assisted them in challenging gender-based stereotypes, to begin with, is questioned.¹⁵ Recently scholars have begun to encourage more creative research approaches, including feminist, intersectional and decolonial that question researchers’ ontological positioning and the broader power relations, which are the impetus for participants to need these programs to begin with.^12-14

The term safe space has been adopted and adapted throughout history to the point that academics argue it has lost meaning, is overused, or may undermine critical thinking.¹⁵ The Roestone Collective explain the concept of safety varies by context and time, noting ‘the categories of safe and unsafe are socially produced and context dependent’.¹⁶ The term space is also fluid; ‘It moves and changes, depending on how it is used, what is done with and to it, and how open it is to even further changes’.¹⁷ In this research, space is understood as ‘an imaginary construction reliant on ritualized forms of control’, with control coming in multiple forms such as from parents, gangs, and the government.²¹

Central to this paper is framing safe space as a social construction and a dynamic process, or as Gotham articulates: ‘the idea that spatial boundaries, identities and meanings are negotiated, defined and produced through social interaction, social conflict and struggles between different groups’.¹⁸ For purposes of this paper, the term safe space relations will incorporate several considerations: the notion of non-physical violence in a physical space; a metaphorical space for unabated emotional expression; and, the relational negotiations constantly changing due to internal and external players and factors (e.g. groups, government legislation, common law). It is the third aspect, here recognised as the volatile nature of the communities studied in this research coupled with the positioning of participants, community membersⁱ and the organisation that fosters an environment where participants can be ‘safe’ while experiencing risk-taking.¹⁹ Viewing the term as dynamic, constantly evolving, and relational allows us ‘to understand how the people who cultivate safe spaces recognise and negotiate sometimes deeply problematic differences’.²¹

Safe space is well established in educational studies and social work but is still under-researched within SDP. In 2005, Brady presented a significant analysis on the relationship between SDP and safe space, illustrating the realities of challenging the normative acceptance of gendered space in society.³ Gendered space refers to girls and ‘women’s lesser access to certain spaces, and the association of space with gender stratification’.²⁰ Drawing on research conducted in Egypt and Kenya concerning young women’s participation in SDP programming, Brady argues it is the characteristics of the local culture that heavily influence how space is occupied and used rather than the physical space itself.³ An argument also demonstrated through Hayhurst’s research in Uganda.²¹ Moreover, Brady notes that a young age girl’s physical mobility is limited due to cultural norms and security, and these restrictions increase with adolescence.²

Restrictions to space can be varied. For example, Spaaij and Schulenkorf analyse safe space as multi-dimensional, including physical, sociocultural, psychological/affective, experimental and political.²² These dimensions are also explored through the methodology of participatory mapping and personal geographies, where it is argued local voices are heard in the process of gaining knowledge on the physical and psychological relations within local space.²³ Sobotová et al. illustrate the ‘social geographic role of sport and physical activity and how they influence the use and perception of insecure or dangerous places’, concluding with an endorsement for sport as a pathway to improve local security, but noting that access can be problematic.³⁴

Safe space is a critical issue for the SDP organisation under investigation because power and control in the neighbourhoods where it operates is continuously being negotiated by various actors such as local citizens, gangs, and the government. The positioning of the SDP organisation, as neither a strict insider nor outsider in the community, allows the organisation to play a unique role as it operates across class lines and in multiple neighbourhood zones while providing community members with opportunities to do the same. As such, it has become a rare instigator for safe space relations in the community.

The SDP organisation under investigation allows girls to access sport in a mixed-gender setting, but it does not address female ‘empowerment’ or gender equity. While conducting this research, it was evident through low female participation numbers and gendered staff roles that the organisation and public space was gendered. However, participants, community members and staff were confused as to why female participation numbers were significantly lower than males as the door was metaphorically ‘always open to everyone’ (Field notes, Chévere and Bacano). Drawing from six months of ethnographic research and building on the works of Brady, Sobotová et al., and Spaaij and Schulenkorf, this paper will explore the contextual complexities – social, cultural and historical – that shape and constrain space in an SDP organisation in Colombia.¹¹ To be clear, what I want to explore here is not the perception of ‘equal access’ to space, but rather how the local hegemonic culture – particularly violence – establishes and normalises gendered space, which in turn reinforces girls lack of participation.

This paper will begin by addressing the research location and methods. Next, the exogenous processes that affect the organisation’s agency, and the intimate relationship between safe space and gendered space will be discussed. Finally, the strengths and weaknesses of the SDP organisation’s delivery will be analysed through Spaaij and Schulenkorf’s dimensions of safe space before suggestions for addressing gendered space and gender equity will be made.

Location and SDP in Context

Colombia began 2017 as a post-conflict nation that has made great strides towards peace, but its citizens have endured the longest running armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere. Since 1985, more than 5.8 million people or 10% of Colombians have registered with the national government as victims of conflict: an estimated 5.7 million people have been displaced with more than 2.6 million being women and more than one million children under 12 years of age.²⁴ The conflict was not only physically gruelling but psychologically testing as Colombians were further racially and economically segregated along class lines.²⁵ Although the Colombian government and the largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), signed a peace agreement in 2016 and the nation celebrated the lowest national homicide rate since 1974,²⁶ the legacy of violence remains prevalent in the form of fear and stigmatisation.

Colombia’s history includes excessive inequality, resulting in social discrimination.³⁸ Elite families own vast quantities of land and the government class system, which is administered through residential property, reinforces segregation, thereby producing a hotbed for social stigmatisation and ‘othering’.²⁷ A product of colonialism, the dominant people in power are of Spanish descent with light skin.^28,38 Whereas, the majority of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) identify their ethnicity as indigenous or Afro-Colombian²⁹ and occupy the two lowest socio-economic classes.³⁰ These details are noted for purposes of this paper because Colombia’s history of violence (which has reproduced a violent heteronormative masculinity as standard³¹) coupled with an organised class system, shapes social roles and the use of space in Colombia.³⁸ In other words, class, race, and gender are intersectional and significantly impact the production and reproduction of who can own, access, and shape space. Colombia’s history combined with localised violence affects how the SDP organisation discussed in this research operates.

With the recent exceptions of Cardenas³² and Sobotová et al³⁴, the SDP movement in Colombia has received little attention in academic research even though the application of sport as a development and peace-building tool in Colombia began in the mid-1990s and is rapidly expanding. In response to the murder of professional soccer player Andrés Escobar, grassroots and multi-sectorial football for peace programs were implemented to combat football’s negative connotation and to use it as a tool for positive social change; a fundamental component of this movement was the inclusion of girls.³³ Although Colombians identify football as a national source of pride, customarily only men are encouraged to play.³⁴ Although girls are included within SDP, their participation remains ‘allowed’ within a mixed-gender context that prioritises boys.¹¹

Six months of ethnographic research was conducted in two field offices of a leading SDP organisation identified by the pseudonym, VIDA.ⁱⁱ Operating in multiple locations throughout the nation, VIDA work with children starting at age six and encourage them to continue as trained ‘leaders’ or coaches into early adulthood. Sport is what connects the organisation to the SDP movement, and although it is a fundamental aspect of their methodology, their primary concern is psycho-social support; this includes supporting children in school, creating a safe environment, preventing drug use, and teaching conflict resolution and tolerance practices. Because they work in many diverse geographical settings, they do not uphold a single methodology but adjust their practices by location.

Two of VIDA’s field offices are in the neighbourhoods of Chévere and Bacano. Citizens live in insecure, overcrowded houses and many work menial, unreported jobs. It is common for residents to have observed extreme violence, lost family members, and have limited social networks. Chronic stress, which leads to high levels of depression, is common.ⁱⁱⁱ VIDA staff were empathetic and had developed strong relationships with the local community; as such, they were cognisant to the problems these citizens encounter.¹⁸ Their presence in the community is on an insider/outsider spectrum as this consideration depends on who is asked. Participants and their families considered VIDA staff to be ‘family’, and most community members appreciated VIDA’s efforts (field notes, Chévere and Bacano). But a few community members’ responses were slightly colder including a man in Bacano who complained of VIDA’s ‘outsider methodology’ (field notes, Bacano). Through observation, it was apparent that VIDA employees, although not considered wealthy, were from more stable social classes: most had university degrees; they did not live where they worked; they tended to have lighter skin than participants and be able-bodied. In the field offices, jobs were gendered with men occupying coaching roles and women in psycho-social support roles (field notes, Chévere and Bacano). Local volunteers (adults and youth leaders) worked closely with VIDA staff and in the field offices and fostered a horizontal power structure.¹⁸ It should be explicitly noted that many community members were also not raised in the neighbourhoods where they currently reside, and the insider/outsider status as well as power dynamics within these neighbourhoods is complex and ever-changing.^iv

When asked to explain everyday challenges in Chévere, Lorena, an employee, highlighted the complexity of gender roles, the normalcy of anti-social behaviour, and the different zones organised within the neighbourhood. She stated, ‘Boys join together to steal. They are immersed in drugs, but the biggest problem is the gang mentality. Obviously, there are drugs, weapons, but crime in that area is more marked gangsterism… There are girls who are sexually exploited’. And in response to the same question in Bacano, a mother of two female participants, Valery, labelled her neighbourhood ‘dangerous’ and spoke of regular crime that results in her family spending most of their time indoors.