Kaufman, P. W. (1996). National parks and the woman's voice: A history. Albuquerque:

Abstract

Several historians that I know at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill talk about the untapped potential for historical research in the field of recreation and leisure. In fact, several of them have decided that the opportunity is too good to pass up, so they are starting to do their own research about the role of leisure in community development, the influence of race and gender on sport, and the role that recreation played in the labor movement and union organizing. Some of them are interested in the personal aspects of leisure so are analyzing women's involvement in garden clubs, reading diaries about the common experiences of daily living, or gathering oral histories. These historians all suggest that more collaborative research is needed between leisure studies and history. Some professionals in the field of recreation and leisure studies lament the ahistorical way we approach research and practice. We know almost nothing about our past, especially if we happen to be a woman, a person of color, or a person with a disability. We wait for someone else to tell our story. In her book, National Parks and the Woman's Voice, Polly Kaufman, a teacher of women's history at the University of Massachusetts, tells a revisionist's story. She provides a glimpse through women's eyes into the history of one of our most visible institutions for outdoor recreation-the National Park Service. Her book is thorough, compelling, and insightful. As I read the book, I was struck with how little I knew about women's professional involvement in outdoor recreation. By the end of the book, I was grateful to this woman historian who cared enough to bring attention to the invisibility of women in the out-of-doors and give recognition to the struggle and commitment of women to preserve and enjoy our natural spaces. Kaufman wrote her book from a feminist perspective that accentuated the male-defined culture of the Park Service. She developed a framework that explores the two main factors on the development of the Park Service (i.e. the military ethos and the public communications approach), the influence of these factors on women's opportunities and expectations regarding the roles they could fill in the Park Service, and the effect of these factors on allowing women's voices to be heard. For example, she described the conflict that arose when the old-time rangers from the military tradition of protector and enforcer saw the new male ranger-naturalists as effeminate because of the cordiality, grace, and chivalry expected to meet the demands for visitor services and education. This homophobic attitude toward the ranger-naturalists fueled an animosity among the male rangers. The conflict was ultimately directed toward women who wanted to work within the ranger ranks. The old-time rangers felt their jobs were man's-work and inappropriate for women while the new ranger-naturalists felt the hiring of women would confirm the perceived effeminacy of their jobs. The culmination of these homophobic attitudes was a Park Service policy that prohibited women from all ranger positions for the next four decades. Kaufman has developed the book around the voices of women. In her first section that speaks for parks from the women pioneers' perspectives, she brings visibility to the roles that women carried into the outdoors as explorers and travelers, early park founders and advocates, the first women ranger-naturalists, and Park Service wives. She detailed the lives of many women unknown to most of us, yet went beyond providing a list of accomplishments. Throughout these chapters, she developed a comprehensive framework that included a broad range of involvement of women in environmental movements as well as professional careers. One has only to read these chapters to understand the struggles of women as they explored the wild areas, vied for positions as ranger-naturalists, enlisted in efforts to save and preserve natural areas, and eventually accepted the only route of service open to them within the National Park Service-as wives of Park Rangers. …