Women Working in the outdoor Industry...
Every year the gender divide with qualified outdoor professionals, such as Mountain Leaders (ML) and Rock Climbing instructors (RCI) gets smaller and having been involved in delivering some aspects of climbing based qualifications these past 18 months (RCI, CWA) I have noticed these can often be 50/50, which is fab!
But here is the s%&*t sandwich... my Mountain Leader Assessment/Training was quite different,(2:9) with still just over a 1/4 of awardees being female, why is there still a divide? Although the award is hard to gain and quite physically demanding, especially with carrying large expedition sacks etc. women are just as capable as men at this type of exertion. Is it that women still feel like it is male dominated? Is that the barrier? Being a petite female, I am often mistaken for someone very young and I often feel like I always have to validate my own abilities and experience to be taken seriously as an outdoor professional. Anyone that knows me well, understands the time, effort, blood, sweat and tears it has taken for me to get to where I am today, but as a female we are still in a market that is male dominated... And this is in my experience how 'some' of the general public (our potential clients) view the 'mountain guiding' industry.
To hold these awards, you have to have passed a competency to a really high standard awarded by Mountain Training, with that award comes a consolidation period between the training and assessment timeline. And then you have the years of experience logged before that process began! So that makes me valid and worthy, along with my fellow female MTA members too!
Anyway so back to the point, if you have ever had the company of an amazing female guide, instructor or the like in the outdoors then big them up and recommend them to friends and celebrate Women In the Outdoors.
Glad to have got that off my chest! (No pun intended) in the mean time let's continue Challenging stereotypes
If you are interested in learning about this further, here is a link to some studies by Dr. Jenny Hall https://www.mountain-training.org/.../42add773-f871-408c...
Kelly Duffy Adventures
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