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Hunt for the
wilderwomen
Megan Hine and her husky, Tug. Photo: findra.co.uk
Addressing the gender imbalance
in outdoor education.
By Loren Smith
A
dventurer Bear Grylls, of Man vs.
Wild fame, was first praised,
then scorned, for his ‘tough guy’
persona. All the while, most people hadn’t
heard of Megan Hine.
The fellow Brit was once described by
Grylls as “stronger than 99 per cent of men
I know”. She guides outdoor expeditions in
bushcraft, climbing and mountaineering,
and consulted to Grylls on outdoor safety
for several of his survival shows.
Hine’s invisibility reflects that of women
in outdoor education generally, says Tonia
Gray. The associate professor in pedagogy
and learning at Western Sydney University
has an upcoming book that underscores
this, The Palgrave International Handbook
of Women and Outdoor Learning.
Based on her own research and that of
over 80 other outdoor education scholars,
the edited volume explores gender
inequity in the field.
For example, although women have
comprised over half of Gray's students
since the 1990s, out of 1144 articles
from two leading outdoor education
journals, sole-author men were credited
twice as much as women, and men’s
articles attracted double the amount of
citations. Similarly, from a sample of 32
Australian conferences from 1991 to 2016,
on average only 20 per cent of keynote
speakers were women.
Women’s lack of prominence in outdoor
education isn’t confined to academia;
seven of the eight board members of the
Outdoor Council of Australia are men,
Gray notes. Women are also largely absent
from lists of influential people in the
sector, like on Wikipedia, which is mostly
male-edited.
Gray says although the field is much-
changed from its “macho” '80s days, there’s
still a long way to go.
“If you ask anyone in the outdoor ed field
who the founder of outdoor ed is, they’ll
say Kurt Hahn.” Little do they know, Marina
Ewald, much like Megan Hine for Bear
Grylls, guided Hahn’s way.
Three decades ago, however, outdoor
education was brutal. It embraced the
‘outward bound’ mentality, which is “a little
bit along the army lines: beat them down
before you build them up; pit yourself
against nature, rather than work with nature".
The title of Grylls’ show, Man vs. Wild,
exemplifies this.
Gray describes being one of only two
women at her first ever outdoor education
conference. That changed in the mid-'90s,
when a fresh wave of feminism rolled in.
And now, with the wellness movement,
nature’s feminine angle – where nature is
seen as a calmant, not an antagonist – has
never been more potent. Despite this, on
the face of it, women remain absent in
outdoor education.
“When you look at who’s being cited,
who’s on the boards of executives, it’s like
we fail to exist,” Gray says.
She had her 'aha' moment at a conference
in 2013, where all the speakers and people
cited were male.
“It happened to be a coffee break
afterward, and [a group of women and I] all
looked at one another and said, ‘What the
f*** just happened in there?’
"It was like a penny dropped. And we
said, ‘Okay, it’s time for change.’
“I realised … I’m part of the problem,
because I’m not calling it. And because I’m
not agitating, I’m actually feeding into this
male-dominated domain.”
Gray explains why, until now, this has
been the case. “I was, myself, suffering
from feminist fatigue.” In other words, she
was sick of being branded a ‘feminazi’.
Then there is women’s divergent, less
ego-driven leadership style.
“[Hine] actually says she’s got no ego
and that’s why she’s survived, because
there’s no place for ego in nature,
otherwise you’ll die,” Gray says.
She describes female leadership as like
an elephant’s. Female elephants lead from
behind, pushing their baby in front of them.
In female human outdoor educators, they
do this so learners can discover things
themselves.
Nonetheless, she’s certain things are
about to transform for women in outdoor
education. After hearing her gender
inequality research last year, men were
“pretty much gobsmacked”, she says.
“I’m sure you’ve got [gender inequality]
in journalism. We’ve got it in the arts,
we’ve got it in Hollywood, it’s everywhere.
"[But] there is a wave, probably a
tsunami even, of change happening,
which is great.”
Soon, therefore, instead of shadowing
Bear Grylls-types, people like Megan Hine
will be cited alongside them. ■
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