HALIFAX – Nine-year-old Lydia Houck was looking forward to a day of fishing, hiking and golfing when she browsed through a list of summer day camps offered near her Nova Scotia home.

But the only option that fit her interests was just for boys.

In contrast, the only all-girl camp, dubbed Glamorous Girls, offers jewelry-making and a trip to the spa for manicures and pedicures for girls aged five to 12.

Lydia says she'd rather be fishing.

"It was really frustrating that they were being discriminatory and they were saying that boys should look forward to doing this and that girls shouldn't do this," Lydia, who will be entering Grade 4 in the fall, said in an interview from her home in Windsor.

"My brother and I go fishing a lot and I enjoy going outside a lot, and this camp seemed to fit that description and it was pretty much the only day camp that did."

The Municipality of the District of West Hants offers three other day camps that are co-ed – a trip to an amusement park, a day at the waterslides and a pirate-themed excursion into Halifax – but Lydia said none of them sounded as fun as the camp for boys.

The municipality says the idea for next Monday's spa day came from similar all-girl day camps elsewhere in Nova Scotia, with at least one Halifax-area community staging its own spa event for young girls this summer.

West Hants recreation director Kathy Kehoe denied the camp lineup is discriminatory and said there are no plans to reverse the decision before the event for boys takes place on Tuesday.

"It's the only complaint we've had," said Kehoe. "It's been very well-received in the public. Whether we do it again or not, it's hard to say. We'll make that call next year."

Kehoe said it would be difficult to let Lydia into the outdoor camp so close to the event, since it has long been advertised as boys-only and others might want similar exceptions.

The municipality's warden, Richard Dauphinee, agreed there was nothing wrong.

"We're always tried to be innovative. This is a pilot project, we've never run it before," said Dauphinee. "They decided they would try just girls things for the girls and just boys things for the boys and see how it worked."

Jacqueline Warwick, the co-ordinator of gender and women's studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said there is nothing innovative about splitting boys and girls into activities that are traditionally masculine and feminine.

She said she was "astonished" that a municipal government would be behind such blatant gender stereotyping, adding that the idea of a spa day for young girls is part of a larger cultural phenomenon that ensures girls and boys fit into specific gender roles.

"I do think that there is a widespread movement to restore these very repressive, old-fashioned gender roles," said Warwick.

"This emphasis on frivolity . . . can be understood as a way of occupying girls' and women's time. They spend all their time and money on these activities. It's a way of containing women and girls into these safe stereotypes where they're not going to disrupt society."

Lydia's mother, Lorna Houck, agreed.

"It's sad that 5-year-old girls are being steered into this glamorous role, and the real world isn't about being glamorous and how we look," she said.

"Save that until they're older and they know why they're being glamorous, and what they're being glamorous for and to whom. It seems like the adults that are making these decisions have their own preconceptions about what little girls should be."

Lydia, who has taken her complaint directly to the warden and the municipal council, seems resigned that she won't be able to join the boys' camp this year, but she hopes her story will spark change in the future.

She said the municipality should "think more about what effect this would have on people and what the message would be that they're giving people with these day camps."