Female Mountaineers Research Articles

Do female mountaineers take lower risks while high-altitude mountaineering? An intersex analysis from the Swiss Alps

Do female mountaineers take lower risks while high-altitude mountaineering? An intersex analysis from the Swiss Alps

Adaptation of Chinese Female Mountaineers’ Diets in High-Altitude Environments

High-altitude environments pose unique challenges to individuals, and Chinese female mountaineers are no exception. This paper delves into the dietary adaptations of Chinese female mountaineers as they conquer some of the world's most challenging peaks. It highlights the specific dietary changes and strategies employed. The impact of these dietary adaptations on performance and well-being is assessed. This paper explores potential research directions and provides recommendations for optimizing nutrition in high-altitude expeditions. Understanding the intricacies of diet in high-altitude environments is critical for the health and success of Chinese female mountaineers.

Rebellion, Gender Roles and Discourses, and Historical Memories of War and Peace

Rebellion, Gender Roles and Discourses, and Historical Memories of War and Peace Sandie Holguín and Jennifer Davis One of the pleasures of editing historical writing is that one begins to see common themes emerge among articles that span vast temporal and geographical distances. What links women who appear in late medieval Flemish chronicles to those who emerge in interwar Italian and Turkish women's novels? What traits do nineteenth-century US women mountain climbers and twentieth-century "Monuments Men" share? Conversely, as two articles here reveal, historical actors who took part in similar events might bear little resemblance to one another. Did women who joined transnational peace organizations really share similar goals or the means of attaining them? This issue of the JWH explores these historical questions. The first two articles compel us to mine seemingly problematic sources for information about rebellious women. Lisa Demets', "Spies, Instigators, and Troublemakers: Gendered Perceptions of Rebellious Women in Late Medieval Flemish Chronicles" and Kara Peruccio's, "Bad Romance: Toxic Masculinity, Love, and Heartbreak in Interwar Italian and Turkish Women's Novels, 1923–1932" reveal how written works that historians have traditionally ignored as unreliable, like chronicles and novels, contain insights into both women's rebellious behavior and the forces that try to tame it. Demets employs a close reading of late medieval chronicles from Bruges to understand women's violent participation in medieval revolts. She dispenses with the idea that chronicles are less reliable than administrative sources or that they provide historians with only misogynistic literary tropes. Demets demonstrates that these tropes simultaneously reflected late medieval political ideology—Flemish urban men's anxieties about networks of rebels and women's place among them—and recounted women's real political activities and rebellious behavior in that period. Peruccio, in contrast, writes about four women novelists who used the romance novel genre to examine women's transgressive ideas and behaviors in the context of oppressive authoritarian regimes in the European interwar period. Comparing writers from two countries and regimes that the author admits are rarely likened to one another—Fascist Italy and Kemalist Turkey—Peruccio tries to uncover the strategies that two Italian and two Turkish women authors used to critique their respective regimes, especially concerning gender relations and toxic masculinity. In these non-traditional historical sources, Italian and Turkish women documented their compatriots' affective and material experiences during times of state-enforced misogyny. They probed men's [End Page 7] verbal abuse and sexual violence, society's expectations of female docility, and women's chastity as the measure of the family's always-precarious honor. Employing the term "hidden transcripts," the documentary material that reveals quiet revolts against the status quo, Peruccio exposes how these women authors experienced life under authoritarian rule and battled the toxic masculinity that sprung from it. Masculinity does not have to be toxic, but it determines normative behavior in many places, and it confers certain privileges. Barbara Cutter's "'A Feminine Utopia': Mountain Climbing, Gender, and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America" explores how women who engaged in behaviors that western societies ordinarily deemed masculine, like mountain climbing, opened up possibilities for women to partake in activities once denied them. Cutter focuses on late-nineteenth-century US mountain climbing clubs that admitted both men and women members. Those clubs that welcomed women mountain climbers were also predisposed to think that if women could handle the physical and mental difficulties of mountain climbing, then they were also likely to share the "manly" traits of autonomy and independence. These mountain climbing men and women created a "feminine utopia" of egalitarianism on the mountain tops and hope for an egalitarian world in the flatlands. As women proved themselves on the mountaintops, Cutter argues, they paved the path for Americans to accept women's suffrage as a natural extension of these women's capabilities. If these female mountaineers could exhibit independence in the outdoors, could it be that even more women were capable of exhibiting the mental toughness to participate as full citizens in the public sphere? These mountain climbers certainly thought so. Discourses of masculinity are highly malleable, of course, and they can serve to reveal as much as hide...

‘Joys of Exploration’: Gender-Constructions in the 1959 Cho Oyu Women’s Expedition

In 1959, French mountaineer Claude Kogan created a stir when she planned to summit the 8,201-metre-high Cho Oyu with an exclusively female team. The Expédition féminine au Cho Oyu stands as a key case for demonstrating reactions to the entrance of female mountaineers in the high-altitude field in the late 1950s. Media reports and personal documents of the female climbers are examined to assess gender constructions in Himalayan mountaineering. The expedition is reconstructed through this lens, and its public narration analyzed. Contemporary media reports show the gendered presentation of the expedition stamped by stereotypes, prejudices, and denigration of women’s capabilities. Enormous public attention to the endeavour applied high pressure on the team members, who struggled with the ambivalent views of female mountaineering, especially after its tragic end. The expedition had a significant long-term impact on the history of Himalayan mountaineering by women and by women’s teams.

‘A Woman Will Never Become a Genuine Climber’: An Outline of the History of Polish Female’s Alpinism

Mountaineering has been traditionally and even in the contemporary world been considered a ‘male’ discipline. Female Polish mountaineers historically faced this stereotype. The paths the Polish women traveled from the discovery of the ‘Polish Alps’ – the Tatra Mountains – to the exploration of the highest mountains in the twentieth century and twenty-first century, were complicated. They had to struggle not only with adversities resulting from the social and political situations Poland, but also cultural challenges. This is strongly articulated in their attitudes towards the mountains, their fight for acceptance their independence in climbing, as well as their perspectives as well as their male peer's perspectives on women’s places in mountaineering. Despite the way being paved by Polish female climbers for the complete independence of women in the mountains, in the twenty-first century a veiled problem in remains in accepting their presence in competitive mountain climbing in Poland.

Women’s mountaineering: accessing participation benefits through constraint negotiation strategies

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to investigate the strategies women use to negotiate mountaineering participation constraints and the resultant benefits from participation. Survey responses from 321 female mountaineers produced four constraint negotiation dimensions and three participation benefit dimensions using confirmatory factor analysis. Three of the four negotiation dimensions support earlier findings in the literature on women’s experiences of adventure activities. The identification of a fourth dimension relating to ‘confidence and adaptation’ represents a new contribution. Similarly, the three benefit dimensions largely support existing literature. However, some benefits loaded on different dimensions to what has previously been reported and verifying the influence of each negotiation dimension on specific benefit dimensions also represents an original contribution. Therefore, this study extends our understanding of female adventure participants and quantitatively verifies women’s constraint negotiation and participation benefits in the context of mountaineering. Accordingly, this study makes an important theoretical contribution to the understanding of women’s adventure experiences in mountaineering, which may be of interest to others researching female participation in other adventure activities. The findings also suggest that mountaineering is a space that is being used as a means to resist gendered expectations and to gain empowerment.

Gender and the Sportification of Mountaineering: Case Studies

The topic of this article is the history of mountaineering using the concepts of gender and “sportification” as theoretical frameworks. Mountains have been and in many regions of the world still are deserted areas which may be accessed by hunters or used in the valleys for goat and sheep framing. People who had to cross them used, as far as possible, the valleys. These attitudes and practices changed in the second half of the 19th century when climbing developed as a sport and when increasing numbers of male “alpinists” competed for first ascents. As this sport was difficult, strenuous and dangerous, mountains were considered as “playing grounds” of men. However, there were some female mountaineers who accompanied men or even climbed with other women. A specific focus of this article will be on the women who, in the true sense of the term, conquered new grounds countering gender stereotypes and the femininity ideals of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Grenzen im Aufstieg. Berge als Transgressionsräume von Geschlechtergrenzen

ASCENTS WITH LIMITS: MOUNTAINS AS SPACES FOR GENDER TRANSGRESSIONMountains and Alpine spaces are historical places where determined national, economic and cultural norms as well as practices were and still are negotiated. The article focuses on the question of gender in the mountains as a social space, which the author explores, drawing on the example of the history of climbing expeditions to the highest mountains in the world, the Himalayas. Against this background she presents, from the point of view of gender history, the so-called female expeditions, i.e. mountain expeditions initiated, organised and conducted from the mid-1950s by all-female teams. They serve as analytical lenses to look into gender relations in mountaineering and their transformations in 1955–2014. Drawing on four social spaces the author raises questions about crossing gender boundaries due to socially-constructed gender norms as well as strategies for overcoming them.The first part of the article is devoted to female expeditions undertaken in 1955–1962 by British female climbers. These enterprises expanded the areas in which female mountaineers operated, without, however, questioning social gender stereotypes. The organisers of the expeditions deliberately presented themselves in accordance with social gender norms, and by choosing reasonable mountain goals, didn’t join the competition associated with the Himalayan eight-thousanders. The importance of gender based boundaries in high altitude mountaineering in the late 1950s is revealed in part two of the article when for the first time a female team set a famous eight-thousander as a goal for themselves. Press reports from before and after the expedition reflect prejudice and scepticism, presenting the female climbers in a manner that affronted them as overambitious and incompetent. It was not until the 1970s that a younger generation of female climbers openly and critically spoke against sexism and discrimination of women in high mountain climbing, as the author describes in part three. Female expeditions allowed women to avoid exclusion from male teams and attempt to climb the highest peaks on their own. The article ends with a presentation of the significance of female expeditions in the Himalayan state of Nepal, where since the 1990s such expeditions have provided Nepalese women with opportunities to made their mark on the tourist trade. On the other hand, female expeditions have been used by tourist and political institutions as an instrument of raising public awareness of issues like equality policy, climate protection or promotion of tourism.

Granice we wspinaniu. Góry jako przestrzenie transgresji granic płci

ASCENTS WITH LIMITS: MOUNTAINS AS SPACES FOR GENDER TRANSGRESSIONMountains and Alpine spaces are historical places where determined national, economic and cultural norms as well as practices were and still are negotiated. The article focuses on the question of gender in the mountains as a social space, which the author explores, drawing on the example of the history of climbing expeditions to the highest mountains in the world, the Himalayas. Against this background she presents, from the point of view of gender history, the so-called female expeditions, i.e. mountain expeditions initiated, organised and conducted from the mid-1950s by all-female teams. They serve as analytical lenses to look into gender relations in mountaineering and their transformations in 1955–2014. Drawing on four social spaces the author raises questions about crossing gender boundaries due to socially-constructed gender norms as well as strategies for overcoming them.The first part of the article is devoted to female expeditions undertaken in 1955–1962 by British female climbers. These enterprises expanded the areas in which female mountaineers operated, without, however, questioning social gender stereotypes. The organisers of the expeditions deliberately presented themselves in accordance with social gender norms, and by choosing reasonable mountain goals, didn’t join the competition associated with the Himalayan eight-thousanders. The importance of gender based boundaries in high altitude mountaineering in the late 1950s is revealed in part two of the article when for the first time a female team set a famous eight-thousander as a goal for themselves. Press reports from before and after the expedition reflect prejudice and scepticism, presenting the female climbers in a manner that affronted them as overambitious and incompetent. It was not until the 1970s that a younger generation of female climbers openly and critically spoke against sexism and discrimination of women in high mountain climbing, as the author describes in part three. Female expeditions allowed women to avoid exclusion from male teams and attempt to climb the highest peaks on their own. The article ends with a presentation of the significance of female expeditions in the Himalayan state of Nepal, where since the 1990s such expeditions have provided Nepalese women with opportunities to made their mark on the tourist trade. On the other hand, female expeditions have been used by tourist and political institutions as an instrument of raising public awareness of issues like equality policy, climate protection or promotion of tourism.

Women’s mountaineering tourism: an empirical investigation of its theoretical constraint dimensions

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceived constraints on participating in mountaineering tourism faced by women, and to empirically verify the dimensionality of those constraints. Survey responses from 314 female mountaineers were collected and four constraint dimensions were identified using confirmatory factor analysis. Three of these dimensions: ‘intra-personal’, ‘inter-personal’ and ‘structural’ constraints support earlier findings in the extant literature, both in general and in the adventure literature more specifically. The identification of a fourth dimension relating to ‘family’ constraints represents a theoretical contribution to the literature and an additional barrier to women’s participation in mountaineering tourism. In previous studies, ‘family’ constraints have typically been subsumed within ‘inter-personal’ or ‘intra-personal’ constraints, but have emerged as a distinctly separate constraint category for women in relation to this particular tourist activity. The findings also have important implications for adventure tourism management practice.

Gender relations in French and British mountaineering

From its emergence in the middle of the 19th century, mountaineering has always been a very masculine activity, which is practised by men and which conveys manly representations. The study of the very few autobiographies written by female mountaineers tells us something about gender relations in French and British mountaineering. First of all, the scarcity of these narratives (compared to narratives written by men) is evidence of the symbolical place of women in mountaineering. Then, theses texts bring to light the atypical trajectories and social dispositions (each time replaced within the social and historical context of the life of the author) of these women. Finally, they show how female mountaineers consider male mountaineers of their time – men are omnipresent in female narratives, whereas women are almost absent in men’s ones – and reveal implicitly their inferior status. In this study, historical and social context, although not central, is important: each time, it is in relation to the social and sport norms of a time period that one can appraise the place of female mountaineers.

(SWET)ing for the Summit: A Feminist Cultural-Studies Analysis of Singapore's First Women's Mount Everest Team

This article is a feminist cultural-studies analysis of Singapore’s first all-female mountaineering team to successfully summit Mount Everest. A feminist cultural-studies approach was used to explore the highly male hegemonic domain of mountaineering and the ways in which the Singapore Women’s Everest Team (SWET) was situated within the sport and their local Singapore culture. Qualitative, face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with six elite-level Singaporean female mountaineers (ages 25 to 39) were conducted by the first author in January 2009, before their attempt to summit Mount Everest. Using inductive analysis and feminist deconstruction, several salient themes emerged from the data: (a) disrupting norms, (b) sexism in extreme sports, and (c) women-centered spaces. The interviewees demonstrated unity as an all-women team as they overcame challenges in their pursuit of climbing Mount Everest. This study attempts to expand the sport studies literature with multicultural and gendered perspectives of female mountaineers.

Fatal Accidents among Elite Mountaineers: A Historical Perspective from the European Alps

The lifetime risk of a fatal mountain accident among elite European alpine mountaineers and its time trends are determined by studying a fixed cohort of 390 elite mountaineers listed in the Encyclopaedia of the Alps (Hiebler, 1977). At publication of the encyclopaedia, 158 individuals were still living and were followed up until the end of 2008. The crude lifetime risk of a fatal accident for elite mountaineers is 0.203 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.165 to 0.246). The difference in mortality between male (0.207; 95% CI: 0.168 to 0.251) and female mountaineers (0.118; 95% CI: 0.033 to 0.343) is not statistically significant. No fatal accidents occurred among elite mountaineers born before 1820. For the birth cohort from 1820 to 1949, the lifetime risk of a fatal accident (male mountaineers only) increased with time from 0.069 (95% CI, 0.019 to 0.220) to 0.375 (95% CI, 0.212 to 0.573). For all time strata, the highest risk of a fatal mountain accident was observed at an age of 30 to 39 yr. The high mortality among elite mountaineers clearly demonstrates that the limits of human performance are reached by these activities. The high risks should be communicated and should motivate risk-reduction efforts for this highly exposed subgroup of mountaineers.

‘Wanting the Children and Wanting K2’: The incommensurability of motherhood and mountaineering in Britain and North America in the late twentieth century

The death of British mountaineer Alison Hargreaves, in 1995 while climbing K2 in Pakistan, the world's second-highest mountain, sparked debates in Britain and North America within mountaineering communities and the press. Hargreaves was a contentious figure because she climbed distant, high mountains as the mother of young children, and was thus constructed a ‘bad mother’. Drawing on ethnographic research in Banff, Canada and Nepal in 1999 and 2000, as well as mountaineering and other media, I examine the social anxiety arising over mother-mountaineers, in particular at a mountain film festival in Banff. Hargreaves and American Kitty Calhoun, who was also criticized, were both professional mountaineers and identified themselves as ‘normal working mothers’. I contextualize their maternal subjectivities within the wider public scrutiny over white, middle-class, working mothers at that time, to show how female mountaineers mediated their mountaineering desires within dominant discourses about ‘sacrificial motherhood’, which resulted in ambivalence. Hargreaves wrote in her diary while waiting to climb K2, ‘It eats away at me—wanting the children and wanting K2. I feel like I'm being pulled in two’. I argue that these women were situated at the intersection of two clashing discourses—mountaineering as a journey far removed from home and motherhood as an intensive presence with one's children bound to home. ‘El deseo de niños y el deseo de K2’: la inconmensurabilidad de la maternidad y el alpinismo en Inglaterra y Norte América en los finales de siglo XX La muerte de la alpinista británica, Alison Hargreaves, en 1995 mientras escaló K2 en Pakistán, el segundo pico más alto del mundo, resultaba en debates en Inglaterra y Norte América en las comunidades de alpinismo y los medios de comunicación. Hargreaves era una figura discutidora porque como una madre con niños pequeños, escalaba montañas altas y lejos, y como consecuencia fue construido como ‘mala madre’. Haciendo uso de medios de comunicación de alpinismo y otros, y una investigación etnográfica in Banff, Canada y Nepal en 1999 y 2000, examino la ansiedad social surgiendo de alpinistas madres, en particular en la festival cine de Banff. Hargreaves y la americana Kitty Calhoun, que fue criticado también, eran alpinistas profesionales y se identificaban ‘madres trabajadoras normales’. Contextualizo sus subjetividades maternales dentro del escrutinio del público a las madres trabajadoras blancas de media clase y muestro como median las alpinistas femeninas sus deseos de escalar dentro de discursos dominantes sobre ‘la maternidad expiatoria’, lo que resulta en ambivalencia. Escribío Hargreaves en su diario cuando esperaba a escalar K2: ‘Me está comiendo—deseando a los niños y deseando a K2. Siento que se me parte en dos’. Argumento que estas mujeres se situaron a las intersecciones de dos discursos en conflicto—alpinismo como un viaje que está muy lejos del hogar y la maternidad como una presencia intensiva con los niños que están obligado al hogar.

Prediction of susceptibility to acute mountain sickness by SaO2 values during short-term exposure to hypoxia.

Prediction of the development of acute mountain sickness (AMS) in individuals going to high altitudes is still a matter of debate. Whereas some studies found that subjects with a blunted hypoxic ventilatory response (HVR) are predisposed to AMS, others did not. However, the HVR has often been determined under very acute (5 to 10 min) isocapnic hypoxia without consideration of the subsequent hypoxic ventilatory decline (HVD), and the assessment of AMS susceptibility was based on a single altitude exposure. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the relationship between the individual arterial oxygen saturation (Sa(O2)) after a 20- to 30-min exposure to poikilocapnic hypoxia and the AMS susceptibility based on repeated observations. A total of 150 healthy male and female mountaineers (ages: 42 +/- 13 yr), 63 of whom had known susceptibility to AMS and 87 of whom never suffered from AMS, were exposed to various degrees of normobaric and hypobaric hypoxia. Sa(O2) values were taken by finger pulseoximetry after 20 to 30 min of hypoxic exposure. Sa(O2) values after 20 to 30 min of hypoxia were on average 4.9% lower in subjects susceptible to AMS than in those who were not. Logistic regression analysis revealed altitude-dependent Sa(O2) values to be predictive for AMS susceptibility. Based on the derived model, AMS susceptibility was correctly predicted in 86% of the selected individuals exposed to short-term hypoxia. In conclusion, Sa(O2) values after 20 to 30 min of exposure to normobaric or hypobaric hypoxia represent a useful tool to detect subjects highly susceptible to AMS.

Changes in Plasma Leptin and Zinc Status of Women Mountaineers at High Altitude (Short Communication)

The loss of body weight due to suppressed appetite at high altitude is very common. The hormone leptin and trace metal zinc have key roles in appetite regulation. In the present study, changes in leptin and zinc status of female mountaineers with and without supplementation with zinc have been investigated. Plasma leptin, zinc and enzyme activities of alkaline phosphatase (EC 3.1.3.5) and 5' nucleotidase (EC 3.1.3.1) of 25 women mountaineers between age group 17-25 yr were studied. The women mountaineers were divided into two groups, i.e., placebo control (n = 7) and supplemented with zinc at dose 15 mg/day for 21 days (n = 18) and all variables were analysed initially at 1981 m, at high altitude (4572-5182 m) and on return to initial altitude. The basal leptin level for both the groups combined was 3.12 ± 0.57 ng/ml (mean ± SD). Plasma leptin levels were found increased by 24 per cent and 58 per cent, respectively at high altitude and after return in case of control group, whereas in case of zinc-supplemented group, there was a statistically non-significant decrease of 20 per cent at high altitude in comparison to basal values. Thereafter, levels were maintained at baseline. There was no significant change in zinc status of control group as indicated by plasma zinc as well as maintained activities of alkaline phosphatase and 5' nucleotidase in the present study. On the other hand, zinc-supplemented group showed increase in zinc status at high altitude, which was evident by increased plasma zinc levels. On return from high altitude, plasma zinc levels were low in comparison to high altitude but still higher than that of basal. Results indicate beneficial effects of zinc supplementation by decreasing leptin levels at high altitude