It's the shrieks and giggles that hit you first. Inside a small building in central Hackney, a group of 15 girls shout and jostle, leopard-skin hair bands and flashing hairgrips defying their drab school uniforms. At Hackney Young Women's Group, girls are heard as well as seen. Once a week they meet for three hours, discussing everything from sexual health and domestic abuse to healthy eating and careers. Not one of them looks left out.
This project might be thriving, but there is a fear that girls-only spaces are dying out. Once the mainstream, single-sex groups now have to be justified. Giants in youth work such as UK Youth and Clubs for Young People started as single-sex, but are now mixed. In a world where gender equality has supposedly been achieved, youth workers are saying that their funding is being ringfenced and siphoned off for "real" problems - knife crime, gang work and substance abuse - most of which involves boys.
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