The “F” word: Feminism in outdoor education

Abstract

Introduction: The gendered outdoor education landscape When I first entered the outdoor education (OE) profession in the mid '80s, gender disparity was overwhelmingly apparent. The work environment was highly gendered and homogeneous in a range of ways: white, middle class, and able bodied. Attending the first New South Wales state conference in the early '90s, I could almost cut the testosterone in the air with a knife. I was one of two lonely women; we made up a tiny minority of the workforce due to extreme gender imbalance. A similar scene was playing out in the United States in the '80s as illustrated by OE pioneer and founder of Woodswomen, Inc (WI), Denise Mitten (in press), who has traced the history of women adventuring outdoors within a patriarchal field. She recounts: Over thirty years ago, at the 1983 Association for Experiential Education (AEE) International Conference in Lake Geneva, WI, women made a move to unite using the time-tested communication method of posting a note on the bathroom mirror asking women to "meet at midnight at the picnic table." In the US the AEE was in a challenged state because in a previous year the leadership refused to move the conference from Missouri, a state that did not ratify the equal rights amendment (ERA) for women. Women were understandably angry at the lack of political awareness of male leaders. Women were concerned about lesbian baiting that is so often used to silence women. Meeting at midnight in practice and symbolically provided a space and place to talk about women in AEE. (Mitten, in press) Thankfully, change came rapidly in the middle of the 1990s, with the number of women increasing exponentially (Gray, Allen-Craig, & Carpenter, 2016; Miranda & Yerkes, 1996). The field welcomed a groundswell of talented and competent women who aspired to lead the sector and to teach in the outdoor profession (Mitten & Woodruff, 2010). Yet, whilst the overall number of women in OE has risen steadily since the 1990s, growth in our academic recognition and professional influence has stalled (Christie, in press; Gray, Mitten, Loeffler, Allen-Craig, & Carpenter, 2016). Currently, we lag behind in professional status and are disproportionately underrepresented in leadership positions, in spite of the influx of gifted women. The issue has become more acute over the past decade as a number of authors have noted (Bell, Cosgriff, Lynch & Zink, in press; Blades, in press; Christie, in press; Gray, in press; Gray & Mitten, in press; Martin, 2013). By nature, I would like to consider myself an optimistic and constructive contributor, but how to approach this issue is, nonetheless, a thorny problem. In fact, women's gains in the field have been remarkable, as evidenced by entry-level classes in the tertiary sector full of bright, vibrant, industrious young women and with many of the successful women having benefitted from mentors of both sexes. However, the entrenched problem of gender disparity, especially in terms of the asymmetry in recognition and leadership, compel me to name this issue that has plagued the field: there has not been a thorough feminist self-examination. Since the 1990s, the successes achieved in the field may have created a false sense of complacency, and women have not actively pushed for additional changes that will be necessary for us to truly achieve parity. The source of the problem is complicated: OE women do not often find explicit opposition or overt prejudice. Instead, the obstacles are invisible and the covert biases that prevent women's progress appear to be gender neutral. In addition, many women suffer from feminist fatigue--an important through-line of current feminist discussion--where women are exhausted of raising the "F" word time and time again, with no societal change or progress (Gray, Mitten, et al., 2016). In part, our reluctance to bring up these recurring issues is because many of the problems are hard to pinpoint. …