At least that's the idea in Oakland and San Francisco, which plan to implement a bill that has landed on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk to improve girls' participation in municipal athletics -- whether he signs it or not.

The bill, AB 2404, would make California the first state to prohibit gender discrimination in community youth athletics programs, bringing it up to standards set in school athletics 30 years ago.

Both Oakland and San Francisco recently received a grant of $50,000 plus staff training from Team Up for Youth, a regional nonprofit that funds youth sports, to improve gender equity in their parks and recreation departments. Oakland Parks and Recreation, for instance, plans to launch a girls softball league and a girls volleyball league next year.

More than 30 years ago, Title IX prohibited gender discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal funds. The result was an explosion in girls and young women's participation in sports. The number of high school girls playing school sports nationwide went from less than 300,000 to more than 2.5 million today.

Municipal and county parks and recreation departments, where millions of low-income kids go for after-school and summer activities, have no such requirement.

But advocates of AB 2404 say there should be.

"This is another big step forward for more equity in sports," said Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, who proposed the bill.

The ACLU has settled lawsuits against three cities in Southern California, including Los Angeles, since 1998 that alleged girls softball teams were relegated to unsafe, poorly maintained fields with no scoreboards, bullpens or storage space. As a result, those cities were required to provide gender equity in sports.

"We always had girls in our programs, we just didn't always have programs for girls," said Charles Singer, recreation supervisor for municipal sports in Los Angeles.

There's some truth to this in Oakland as well. Two years ago, the first girls-only team was launched -- an elementary school basketball program. Last year, middle school girls got their own basketball league.

"It was strange to me that we didn't have sports teams for girls here," said Audrey Jones Taylor, director of Oakland Parks and Recreation, who has been on the job for five months. "I thought, where's girls volleyball? Where's softball?"

More than 8,000 children, age 5 to 18, participate in Oakland Parks and Recreation programs -- with about 600 more boys enrolled than girls. But the girls can be mostly found in dance or arts and crafts, while the boys gravitate toward basketball and other team sports.

OPD has offered co-ed basketball, but the skill level and physical development between middle school boys and girls doesn't match up, said sports program director Michael Hammock.

In July, the Oakland City Council passed a resolution supporting AB 2404, and since then Jones Taylor has held task force meetings with Team Up for Youth to figure out how to improve girls athletics on a limited budget.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has also pledged his support to improving access for girls to participate in sports, and Team Up for Youth is meeting with officials from that city's Parks and Recreation Department.

"I believe its really important that a strong foundation be set forth at an early age to reduce teen pregnancy and improve the health of girls," said Jones Taylor, a former track star.

Only 27 percent of mostly low-income teen girls in Alameda County participate in sports, according to a 2004 survey by Girls Inc. Numerous studies have shown that athletics increases girls' -- and boys' -- self-esteem and test scores while reducing obesity rates.

In much of the Bay Area, at least a quarter of children are overweight and more than 30 percent are unfit. In Oakland, nearly 46 percent of children are unfit, according to the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

Still, some say that putting a mandate on cities and counties fails to address the larger problem of not enough facilities and sports programs for all children.

"Gender has never been an issue, it's never come up," said Eric Willyerd, general manager of the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District.

Instead, Willyerd said he simply doesn't have enough soccer fields for kids to play, and those fields he does have are damaged from overuse. About $8 million of his funding this year was siphoned off to help balance the state's budget, he said.

"I could have eight more soccer fields and they would be at full capacity," he said.

Mary Wiberg, executive director of the California Commission on the Status of Women, a co-sponsor of AB 2404, said the question is how are municipal fields being assigned, and are girls getting their fair share.

"We're not saying you can't do a contract with Little League, it's how do cities and counties parcel out those contracts," Wiberg said.

There's no monetary requirements in the bill, and the League of California Cities has taken a neutral position on it, saying it mirrors case law on gender discrimination.

Enlisting girls to play can require extra effort, and time, however. The Jack London Youth Soccer League is the largest youth soccer league in the Bay Area, with 7,000 kids playing, half of whom are girls.

"Sometimes (a family's) cultural background doesn't encourage girls' participation in sports," said Gregg Morris, league president. "We do have to work to get them interested."

Since Los Angeles implemented its gender equity program -- called Raise the Bar -- in 1999, the number of girls participating in sports has more than doubled -- from 11,000 to 24,000. The number of boys participating has remained steady at 50,000 annually, and the city has not had to cut boys' opportunities to make way for the girls.

Team Up for Youth is offering to fly the Raise the Bar administrators to the Bay Area to impart some advice on how to reach this level of participation, Baker said.

Incentives range from putting up banners at park facilities that read "girls play here" to making locker rooms safer to finding grants to start new leagues complete with uniforms, coaches, trophies and team photos for all the girls, Singer said.

"There really is an untapped market out there that's so easy to access with just a little bit of effort," Singer said.

Contact Rebecca Vesely at rvesely@angnewspapers.com .