Sweden prides itself as a country where young women can enjoy gender equality. Yet many young women skateboarders experience harassment in public spaces. Drawing from a sensory ethnography, and inspired by the material turn in the social sciences, we analyse how women skateboarders experience the material environments of urban public space, while paying attention to the social and cultural context of Sweden. The urban environment with its smooth marble or rough asphalt surfaces, its alarming sounds and tingling smells, shapes the experience of skateboarding and the construction of femininity. The construction of femininity is also shaped by a social and cultural context that assumes ‘gender equality’ is secure. This paper contributes new empirical findings on what it means to skateboard in public spaces as a gendered minority, and adds to the debate on how a material feminist theory might be developed without overlooking the significance of social and cultural contexts.