Path to Equality: Exploring Gender Mentality in Women’s Outdoor Leadership Case Study

Case Story of Solana

Solana was originally encouraged to pursue outdoor tourist activities by her father. While she recalls that her father was uninterested in technical sports, her family holidays consisted of loading the car and driving to national and state parks. She also developed an interest in outdoor activities such as hiking and rafting via programmes. As a college student, Solana became active in the outdoor programme as a high ropes course facilitator. She continued her duties in outdoor education throughout her college years, directing outdoor trips for summer and weekend programmes and taking other college students on outdoor experiences throughout the academic year. Solana began working with Outward Bound (OB) after graduating from college, when she met a mentor who was an experienced raft leader. She found best Outdoor activity gears here.

Other OB sites where Solana worked “felt kind of like a community of men, with pledging rituals and hierarchies.” For example, on her first orientation trip as an OB teacher, Solana remarked on the group’s male and competitive atmosphere, as well as the need to be “tough.” Solana injured her thumb when chopping down a tree that was blocking the route at the start of the expedition. The tour leader, who was also the OB camp director, failed to consider the injury seriously, and Solana was concerned about how she would be seen if she requested an evacuation. She remarked, “I definitely didn’t want to be [seen as] meek… It felt like that I had to show myself as someone capable of dealing with that sort of scenario.

Problem Statement

Solana was paired with a male co-instructor in one course and found that she was always receiving feedback from students saying she was caring and soothing, but her male co-instructor was receiving equally gendered comments. They decided to conduct an experiment with the pupils. They switched positions, with the male teacher taking on topics such as cooking and first aid, and Solana teaching all the technical skills. “I wore wraparound sunglasses. I didn’t smile for four days and didn’t make a single kind gesture.” Their gendered input did not change in the final evaluation, prompting her to believe that students’ perceptions of men and women in leadership may be culturally established.

Solana told a tale of how, due to a scheduling difficulty, another female teacher took over her role for the first week and wanted to continue on the course for a few days after Solana arrived. Solana described this instructor as “very, extremely loving and kind. When she departed, I believe the kids expected me to take that position, but I did not. I was just not meeting their expectations. I believe that is why they totally slaughtered me on my evaluations.” Solana noticed that the pupils on this course had no expectation of her male co-instructor being caring. However, Solana discovered that when males adopt feminine leadership approaches or emphasize interpersonal abilities, they are highly valued.

These experiences have had a tremendous impact on Solana’s definition of outdoor education and leadership, as well as her approach to teaching student leaders now that she is the assistant director of a university outdoor programme. Solana’s college supervisor had a far different interpretation of outdoor leadership than she did. Her approach is on personal development and motivating others. A leader in the outdoors is “a facilitator of someone else’s self-discovery . . . I perceive it in the genre of people who are creating, providing an experience through which someone has self-discovery and basically increased confidence.”

Furthermore, Solana mentioned that a tagline utilised at this conference was “Ditch the plaid and wear a tie,” which was clearly aimed towards guys. Solana believes that these encounters highlight the ongoing obstacles that women have in outdoor leadership: “I felt really bad for every young female who was there.”

Solution Proposed

Solana is currently attempting to improve the outdoor culture by providing enjoyable activities and experiences for her institution’s students. She thinks her kids are “so much smarter, or aware, and well-educated and empowered.” Despite seeing progress in the next generations of outdoor leaders in her college’s outdoor programme, Solana saw the disparities in gender that her students encounter after graduation. Male students are asked about outdoor technical abilities, but female students are told, “My employer does these things, and I am treated this way. “How should I handle this?” More specifically, these female leaders claim that they are continually being “mansplained” to, and that their talents and abilities are undervalued or challenged.

Due to her background in navigating male-dominated areas, Solana prioritises being a strong female role model in her own programme, mentoring participants of any sexual orientation to be “positive change agents.” In one of her images, she is shown with her huge student crew, whom she now takes to yearly conferences. She is happy of the leadership she gives to her pupils and believes that it will enhance women’s representation in outdoor education. She has emphasised diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) in her outdoor programme.

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Conclusion

Solana seeks to better grasp DEI concerns by talking with other outdoor supervisors, reading, and self-educating about diversity. “Many of the discussions with outside leaders end up circling around comments like, ‘Oh well, it’s always been that way,’ or ‘Oh well, [people of colour] are just not engaged in the outdoors.'” In her perspective, the field of outdoor education has substantial work to do in “reshaping what the programming is” to be more inclusive, and conceptualising how DEI fits into physical education and leadership is crucial for the sector. She said, “Now it’s like I can’t unsee the problem. Now it’s simply engrained.” Solana’s tale serves as a foundation for the subsequent evaluations of study members’ outdoor leadership experiences.

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