Gender Inequality in Skiing

[klar]

Kirby, interesting, thanks for posting that.

"Observed differences between male and females in risk-taking behaviour have made it far too easy to propose biology or socialisation as the cause. However, there are reasons to suspect that lack of opportunity might be a more adequate explanation, and one that again returns to social context."

I also suspect this.

[Buster Highmen]

That describes my philosophy with my son. At the age of 3 in fact on his 3rd birthday I told steamboat he was 3.5 for his first week of lessons. swore to my wife if he didnt like the sport at any time we could simply swim or hang out in the mountains. Same deal every year. I'll put him in ski school and if he cries whines or generally has a crappy time he can drop out. Through hundreds of hours of ski wee, lessons, free time with me etc. I always told him, "if you want to do something else, just let me know." He loves to ski more then me which of course makes me happy but I never pressured him. Now he is a tween and really too old for week long lessons so he hangs with me or other kids but I never pressure him to race even after he was invited to join a local race team. He's just not competitive. Neither am I.
The coolest day ever was taking him to Alta for a sunny spring skiing corn day where he and I spent all day together lapping steeps and never mentioning trail names or ratings or anything. He was just ready to ski it all on that day. Everything from blues to blacks to bowls were fair game. I've been lucky to have hundreds of good ski days but that day sticks out in my mind as the best.

I have son too and he's pretty quiet in general.

Neither of them wanted to do lessons, so they never had one and we just skied with them.

Anyway, the whole topic is weird because on the one hand, it's a real issue, but on the other hand, what I'd like for my girl is for there to be no issue, if you get what I mean. All I can do is support her and keep reinforcing that she can do anything she really wants.

[irul&ublo]

well, I actually read the whole thing (I have access through my university account, if someone wants the pdf i can send it). he uses a lot of words to say quite little and the paper is harder to read than it probably needs to be, like most scientific literature. he does a lot of stating the obvious.....,)"

What did you expect...he's a fucking sociologist.

[LeeLau]

well, I actually read the whole thing (I have access through my university account, if someone wants the pdf i can send it). he uses a lot of words to say quite little and the paper is harder to read than it probably needs to be, like most scientific literature. he does a lot of stating the obvious, imo, and I did not gain any new insights from this. discussing gender inequality in skiing (and in general) is certainly worthwhile, but I don't think this paper adds much to the discussion.

Klar can I get a copy of the paper to read

It was my experience in teaching surgery residents how to operate that male residents tended to have more confidence than ability, while the opposite was true for women--at least in the learning stages.. I suspect the same holds true for mountain sports.

My experience is that women underestimate their ability. Men overestimate their ability. But the sample size is small

I agree that this is pretty base level sociology (which makes up about 75% of the discipline). I mean, sports in general are not the most "feminized" social spaces, and what you find in a study on, let's say gender in hockey, is the same thing you're going to find in a study on gender in skiing. His conclusions are certainly nothing new.

I wrote a master's thesis on risk-taking in skiing and part of the exercise was to educate myself on the various theories explaining the phenomenon. This, of course, included various gender based theories:

Kirby that was interesting and made me want to read more. What I am interested in is re McCammon's heuristics studies where ski touring groups with women had less chance of avalanche involvement provided the group listened to the women. Would be particularly interested into more literature digging into why this is the case

[klar]

why this is the case

tend to make more conservative choices because "women underestimate their ability. Men overestimate their ability." .......?


I sent you the paper on fb. It does not really contain anything related to the issue you mention. have you seen this one? contains some more literature references that may be relevant.
https://www.researchgate.net/publica...lanche_terrain

[old goat]

What is more interesting than the obvious predominance of men in dangerous sports is the increasing presence of women in those sports.
The psychology of women vs men in sports is interesting though. My wife was a national class division I gymnast in college--balance beam was her specialty. After we married I took her climbing once. She was terrified. I had a hard time understanding that. (I suspect whe would have been less frightened free soloing than trusting me for a belay, but that's another issue.) What she did in gymnastics was a lot more dangerous than anything I did in climbing. When we hiked she also was frightened of crossing log bridges that I had no problem with, and my balance is terrible. OTOH she has no fear of ladders and does some pretty scary things on them, like standing on the very top of a step ladder or using a swiveling bar stool for a ladder. Maybe I just don't understand women, or my wife.

[irul&ublo]

I looked at the abstract. He reviewed the web, publications and interviewed a small number of people. Typical social science BS by profs who have to publish something, anything.

[tenB]

I don't need to read that to know that we need more good women skiers. Do we really want to attract more people to stand behind in lift lines though?

[ncskier]

I don't need to read that to know that we need more good women skiers. Do we really want to attract more people to stand behind in lift lines though?

Of course. Get rid of the old gapers and I'll gladly stand behind good looking skiing women. Should result in a net neutral number of skiers if done properly.

[old goat]

Of course. Get rid of the old gapers and I'll gladly stand behind good looking skiing women. Should result in a net neutral number of skiers if done properly.

get rid of the east coast gapers that come out west for a trip and the results should be even better.

[AK47bp]

I don't need to read that to know that we need more good women skiers. Do we really want to attract more people to stand behind in lift lines though?

As long as they are wearing those tight booty ski pants I'm fine with it.

How are those things warm? I always wondered.

[WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot]

get rid of the east coast gapers that come out west for a trip........

really?

[Jong Lafitte]

Personally, I was way more interested in one of the articles that this work was later cited in: "Morality in the Mountains: Risk, Responsibility, and Neoliberalism in Newspaper Accounts of Backcountry Rescue"

I had just been wondering about Neoliberalism in Newspaper Accounts of Backcountry Rescue. I sleeplessly wrestled with questions like: "have we been plagued by too much neoliberalism in these accounts?" "is there really enough neoliberalism in newspaper accounts of backcountry rescue?" "what is neoliberalism?"

I think papers like this generally support very narrow points, mostly because they are about the skills of writing and supporting a thesis than anything else so it makes more sense to focus on something very narrow.

Didn't get to read it, but interesting read, I'm sure; I also wonder if, even though its from as recent as 2011, it might be a bit dated.

[old goat]

really?

no.

[McDee]

Thanks for the summary as well klar, the gist of it does seem like its stating the obvious. It seems to cover the issue of advertising within the sport/moutain sport media which i think would be pretty interesting, but is worth many many more papers by itself in general. The debate about advetising and coverage in magazines has come up here quite recently if i recall. To tie that with the gender disparagy in advetising itself would be worth a read.
Gender inequality in general is an issue and any chance to higlight it is worth it, even if the paper itself is not that great. That it has made it an issue here just goes to show, and some of the posts suggest that it needs the debate.
but then again may be thats just the bleeding heart commie environmentalist in me speaking

[klar]

and some of the posts suggest that it needs the debate.

heh, you think really? tgr is such a welcoming and neutral space!

[Vt-Freeheel]

The issue with gender inequality really starts with the parents and how their kids are brought up. It continues when preschool starts with many educators [who are often not very athletic] steering the kids toward gender specific sports. Where I live [Warren VT.] kids of both genders ski and mountain bike in large numbers. There is a weekly ski program at the 4 local elementary schools where they each ski a different afternoon all winter.

[BigDaddy]

heh, you think really? tgr is such a welcoming and neutral space!

Ha ha... people here are constantly encouraged to come out. But maybe it's the amazing photos you and so many others post?!

[Norseman]

[Norseman]

[ncskier]

get rid of the east coast gapers that come out west for a trip and the results should be even better.

I guess if winter keeps skipping tahoe you'll have the place all to yourself

[old goat]

One thing that has always puzzled me--I know plenty of accomplished, athletic, jeans-wearing women who have young daughters who favor frilly dresses and the color pink. Comes from watching TV I guess. They grow out of it, but it makes you realize how pervasive gender stereotypes are in our culture. Beats a burqa though.

[Buster Highmen]

One thing that has always puzzled me--I know plenty of accomplished, athletic, jeans-wearing women who have young daughters who favor frilly dresses and the color pink. Comes from watching TV I guess. They grow out of it, but it makes you realize how pervasive gender stereotypes are in our culture. Beats a burqa though.

We don't have a TV and don't belong to clubs or social scenes. We are nonmainstream, my wife doesn't wear dresses often, doesn't wear makeup or get her hair or nails done or any of that establishment shit. She rips on skis too and wields a mean power tool. Yet my daughter wanted pink.

It was so weird to watch where my son rejected teddy bears and plush toys, but went straight for the tools and trucks. My wife is better with the skil saw than I am. My daughter totally went for the plush toys and frilly stuff, so I think a lot of it is just the way the come out. We, as parents, might put some frosting or shit on it, but in the nature vs nuture argument, there's a lot to be said for nature.

That said, the point is to let them be, nudge them to find what they love and can reflect self respect and self value independent of sex.

It's obvious that western society shits on females; there's so much obvious misogyny everywhere, especially on TGR. Some of the social compensation is over the top too, but there's a long way to go getting rid of misogyny.

[klar]

We, as parents, might put some frosting or shit on it, but in the nature vs nuture argument, there's a lot to be said for nature.

It's not just the parents though, is it? They go to kindergarden and school and their friends' houses...

this study says that very young kids do not appear to prefer pink over other colours. But by the age of 2, girls chose pink objects more often than boys did, and by the age of 2.5, they had a significant preference for the colour pink over other colours. At the same time, boys showed an increasing avoidance of pink.

That said, the point is to let them be, nudge them to find what they love and can reflect self respect and self value independent of sex.

yup.

[Buster Highmen]

It's not just the parents though, is it? They go to kindergarden and school and their friends' houses...

This occurred before kindergarten and we lived in a remote place where we had very little social interaction.

this study says that very young kids do not appear to prefer pink over other colours. By the age of 2, girls chose pink objects more often than boys did, and by the age of 2.5, they had a significant preference for the colour pink over other colours. At the same time, boys showed an increasing avoidance of pink.

Yes, this coincides with our experience and at that age our kids had very little exposure to other kids. In fact, we were worried that our son had Aspergers or Autism because he refused to interact with other kids until he was about 6 and even then, he was reluctant. He was glued to us and very interactive with us, so the psychs said not to worry.

My wife goes to her in laws farm a lot, but my mother in law is also very non standard : never wears dresses, makeup, any of that stuff, is a hard working Norwegian farm woman. So there's a very entrenched female rural counterculture to which my daughter was exposed. Yet the pink obsession came. My daughter is incredibly tough and has been through some really shitty experiences both from adults and peers in part because she has a reading/eye disability and her parents are socially dysfunctional. She's amazingly abundant despite having been treated like shit in a number of scenarios. Fortunately my wife is a very strong woman as is her mom, so my little girl has good role models to deal with the shitstorm women get.