Confronting two-tiered community recreation and poor women's exclusion: Promoting inclusion, health and social justice

The social, psychological, and physical health benefits of participation in physical activity and other forms of recreation are well documented (Frankish, Milligan and Reid; Sallis and Owen; Reid and Dyck), and evidence suggests that low-income women view access to community recreation as an important dimension of their health and their communities (Weber; Frisby and Hoeber). Although many community recreation departments in Canada have a social mandate of providing services to all citizens to promote health and well being, consistent barriers to regular involvement persist for those who live on the margins and are unable to conform to dominant expectations inherent in modern forms of public recreation (Frisby, Crawford and Dorer; Lyons and Langille;Harvey). With its individualist ideology, classist notions of self-responsibility, and fees for service, we argue that community recreation has become a two-tiered system where only those with sufficient social, cultural, and financial resources can participate (Kidd). Consequently, insufficient subsidies, policies requiring "proof of poverty," and discrimina- tory practices exclude poor women from being actively involved in health-promoting forms of community recreation.
The purposes of this paper are: i) to examine how low-income women see involvement in community recreation contributing to their health, and ii) to examine low-income women's experiences with exclusionary community recreation policies and practices. Hearing the voices of those who are marginalized from the knowledge production and policy development process is important when considering how public sector programs, policies, and practices can become more inclusive (Lord and Hutchison; Frisby and Hoeber). Through fostering inclusion rather than classist forms of service delivery, the community development and social justice mandates of many community recreation departments is advanced thus providing health-promoting resources for those living on the margins.