The Palgrave International Handbook of Women and Outdoor Learning

928 Pages·2018·18.22 MB·English

by  Tonia Gray

Palgrave Studies
in Gender and Education
THE PALGRAVE INTERNATIONAL
HANDBOOK OF WOMEN AND
OUTDOOR LEARNING
Edited by
Tonia Gray and Denise Mitten
Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education
Series Editor
Yvette Taylor
School of Education
University of Strathclyde
Glasgow, UK
“As a male in a profession perfused with male hegemony, this book has opened my
eyes to the many profound—yet often unnoticed—thoughts, feelings and contribu-
tions of female colleagues. It is a waymark along the path towards further maturation
that all involved in our profession will continue to journey.”
—John Quay, Associate Professor in Education,
University of Melbourne, Australia
“Gray and Mitten’s edited book provides important perspectives about women in the
outdoors. It emphasizes the ongoing need to hear women’s voices and normalize their
contributions. Although inroads have been made and the playing field often is per-
ceived as level, the ongoing need is to celebrate and challenge gender equality and
equity in the outdoors.”
—Karla A. Henderson, Professor Emeritus of
Leisure Behavior, Gender & Diversity, and Organized Camping,
North Carolina State University, USA
“Unconscious bias in a male constructed field like the outdoors needs constant atten-
tion as both men and women are affected by it. I have been part of teams and com-
mittees that worked hard to achieve ‘balance’ only for it to slip away once it was
achieved. The bias, present in both men and also, surprisingly to me, women, does not
go away. It needs our constant effort. This book is a major contribution to just that.”
—Chris Loynes, Reader in Outdoor Studies, University of Cumbria, UK
“This book has challenged my good intentions around and helped to expose my mis-
conceptions of gender issues in the outdoors. It has moved me closer toward a much-
needed understanding of the issues and challenges women face. It’s an absolute must
read for those who wish to better understand the gender bias that favours men in
outdoor education.”
—Tom Potter, Associate Professor in the
School of Outdoor Recreation, Parks and Tourism,
Lakehead University, Canada
This Series aims to provide a comprehensive space for an increasingly diverse
and complex area of interdisciplinary social science research: gender and educa-
tion. Because the field of women and gender studies is developing rapidly and
becoming ‘internationalised’ – as are traditional social science disciplines such
as sociology, educational studies, social geography, and so on – there is a greater
need for this dynamic, global Series that plots emerging definitions and debates
and monitors critical complexities of gender and education. This Series has an
explicitly feminist approach and orientation and attends to key theoretical and
methodological debates, ensuring a continued conversation and relevance
within the well-established, inter-disciplinary field of gender and education.
The Series combines renewed and revitalised feminist research methods and
theories with emergent and salient public policy issues. These include pre-com-
pulsory and post-compulsory education; ‘early years’ and ‘lifelong’ education;
educational (dis)engagements of pupils, students and staff; trajectories and
intersectional inequalities including race, class, sexuality, age and disability;
policy and practice across educational landscapes; diversity and difference,
including institutional (schools, colleges, universities), locational and embod-
ied (in ‘teacher’–‘learner’ positions); varied global activism in and beyond the
classroom and the ‘public university’; educational technologies and transitions
and the (ir)relevance of (in)formal educational settings; and emergent educa-
tional mainstreams and margins. In using a critical approach to gender and
education, the Series recognises the importance of probing beyond the bound-
aries of specific territorial-legislative domains in order to develop a more inter-
national, intersectional focus. In addressing varied conceptual and
methodological questions, the Series combines an intersectional focus on com-
peting – and sometimes colliding – strands of educational provisioning and
equality and ‘diversity’, and provides insightful reflections on the continuing
critical shift of gender and feminism within (and beyond) the academy.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14626
“This important book is a first class and comprehensive volume for students and scholars
to explore the narratives of power, oppression and equality associated with women out-
doors. This book will help university students and the outdoor profession to re-story its
future so that a heightened sense of gender awareness and the cultural shift needed can be
woven into the fabric of the outdoor p rofession. At last it has been written! Thank you.”
—Mark Leather, Senior Lecturer in Outdoor
Adventure Education, Plymouth Marjon University, UK
Tonia Gray • Denise Mitten
Editors
The Palgrave
International
Handbook of Women
and Outdoor Learning
Editors
Tonia Gray Denise Mitten
Western Sydney University Prescott College
Penrith, NSW, Australia Prescott, AZ, USA
Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education
ISBN 978-3-319-53549-4 ISBN 978-3-319-53550-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53550-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017960413
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We dedicate this book to the women past, present, and future:
the pioneering women who paved the path before us;
the women in the field doing groundbreaking work in theory and practice; and
the women who will continue to transform the outdoor learning landscape in the
future.
Foreword:
Nourishing Terrains—Nurturing Terrains:
Networks of Connections
I cried from my heart on that mountain
I talked and it spoke to me
Awe inspiring, breath-taking.
I feel so small and insignificant.
I feel like we are the keepers,
Alone and at peace,
A rainbow at the end of the waterfall,
Droplets of water suspended in space
Laughter, love and togetherness,
How do I fit into the scheme of things
There are no “niches.”
The sound of raindrops on my head
The sight of the rainbow across the waterfall
Howling winds against the body
A hysterical human caterpillar,
Seven dwarfs,
Snow balls on the hill top,
Touching each other.
Sunset, sheep and tractor radio,
Shimmering light on valley trees,
The beauty and majesty of nature,
The power of water,
Emotions too deep to describe,
Majestic scenery,
The thunderous sound of the water.
vii
viii Foreword: Nourishing Terrains—Nurturing Terrains: Networks…
Ice crystals trampled in the mud.
The vastness, openness and freedom,
No cars, no noise, no watches that “beep,”
Alone and insignificant—pressures disappear,
No men—absolute bliss,
The beauty of a small pink stone.
A spiritual experience,
Togetherness,
In tune with nature,
Hysterical laughter,
Being in touch with myself,
Emotions let loose with the wind.
Inner-self emerging,
Is this a religious experience?
Belief In yourself, Inner peace,
Overcoming physical barriers,
Ravens diving of the cliff,
Memories of good friends—trust—and love
Beings immortalised in the landscape.
(I Cried from my Heart)
Women Youth Workers, Brecon
Beacons Group (1990, March)
This volume brings together unique knowledge and wisdom from women
who have spent their lives as outdoor educators and leaders, in the Antipodes
and/or North America, as well as Denmark, India, Japan, Norway, and the
United Kingdom. It is a valuable addition to the field, and to education and
leadership more broadly. This compilation examines the theory and practice
of outdoor learning from a multitude of perspectives and experiences made
available through the voices of more than 80 women, many of whom cover in
excess of 30 years of life and career in the outdoors.
The last quarter century has seen a massive change in how different com-
munities perceive and relate to the natural environment, and these changes
have been shaped by local and global social, political, and environmental fac-
tors. Moreover, place and space have huge influences upon experiences of the
outdoors and upon the ways in which humans interact with their natural
environments. Regardless of geographical location, human relations with the
more-than-human have changed dramatically since modern industrial devel-
opment, as has women’s position in the family, community, and society more
generally, within technologically advanced communities. These changes have
Foreword: Nourishing Terrains—Nurturing Terrains: Networks… ix
not happened simultaneously but at different times and places in industrial
cycles. Women in technologically advanced societies have fought and gained
arguably some equality, and at the same time, the planet has come under con-
siderable threat largely as a consequence of excessive and uncaring industrial
development. Humans are nourished by nature as some of these chapters
highlight, whilst other chapters identify the need also to nurture, care for, and
cherish nature. Indigenous knowledge from around the world has understood
well the significant connections between human and more-than-human
health and well-being. This is evidenced in Canada’s, Australia’s, and New
Zealand’s indigenous peoples’ values summarized in Strang and Busse (2009,
p. 8): “Human well-being and environmental well-being are connected, and
disturbance of the environment…is understood to have social, ecological and
spiritual impact.”
Women’s and others’ experiences of being in the outdoors as the title sug-
gests can be nourishing but only if the terrain or nature itself is nurtured and
not abused. The web of connections identified in indigenous values may have
been broken or at the very least weakened through industrialization and colo-
nization, but outdoor learning and leading is crucial in recovering these rela-
tions and women, as illuminated throughout this volume, have contributed
significantly to regaining and strengthening these threads and relationships.
Social and environmental justice is key to the survival of the planet and to
women’s and men’s enduring and enriched lives.
Eco-feminist perspectives in the twentieth century, in identifying these
important relationships and webs of connections, challenged dualistic think-
ing. Such dichotomized ways of seeing and acting in the world emerged in the
Enlightenment period and created distinctions, which tended to privilege cul-
ture over nature, male over female and so forth, creating polarizations and
unequal power relations where none may have existed before.
Donna Haraway’s (1985) classic paper challenged traditional dichotomized
thinking, which created such distinctions that often resulted in oppressive
and abusive actions. Her text calls for the deconstruction of composed binary
opposites towards an understanding of all life, human and nonhuman, as
equally valued. Her manifesto was amongst the many initiating eco-feminist
writings emerging from natural and social science writers of the time.
Women’s contribution to outdoor learning as leaders and thinkers is con-
siderable, as this volume identifies and celebrates. In many ways, these contri-
butions embody much eco-feminist thought and praxis. Despite the apparent
invisibility of eco-feminist theorizing since the 1990s, women’s considerable
contribution to outdoor learning and leadership has continued and even
increased.
x Foreword: Nourishing Terrains—Nurturing Terrains: Networks…
Eco-feminist writing attempts to understand the webs of connections
which embed human and more-than-human relations, and to promote social
equality and environmental sustainability, examining how social, environ-
mental, and spiritual interrelate. Eco-feminist contribution to academic
thought, which has largely but not exclusively been through women’s writing,
has most recently frequently been ignored. For me, eco-feminism identifies
the importance of human and more-than-human interconnections and rela-
tions, and that the notion of social and environmental justice go hand in hand
(Humberstone, 1998). Outdoor learning and leadership are central in
enabling and empowering this union, as the chapters in this book highlight.
However, social justice and environmental sustainability “are not always com-
patible objectives,” as Dobson (2003, p. 83) remarks. There is an inherent
tension between social justice perspectives, which are human centred, and
deep green perspectives, which centre the more-than-human world. Eco-
feminism speaks to these tensions philosophically and through praxis. Since
the 1960s until the 1990s, eco-feminism influenced much thinking and
action in relation to these significant interconnections between social and envi-
ronmental oppressions and degradation. Eco-feminism has now regained its
voices and is recognized as constituting significant bodies of knowledge that
provide for analyses of “the connections among racism, sexism, classism, colo-
nialism, speciesism, and the environment” (Gaard, 2011, p. 26).
This compilation uniquely draws together women’s wisdoms. It celebrates
and analyses women’s contributions to outdoor learning and leadership. As
such, the editors have cultivated a book which makes a valuable, unique, and
major contribution to social and environmental awareness and justice.
Professor Sociology of Sport and Outdoor Education Barbara Humberstone
Buckinghamshire New University
High Wycombe, UK
References
Dobson, A. (2003). Social justice and environmental sustainability: Ne’er the
twain shall meet? In J. Agyeman, R. D. Bullard, & B. Evans (Eds.), Just
sustainabilities: Development in an unequal world (pp. 83–98). London,
UK: Earthscan and MIT Press.
Gaard, G. (2011). Ecofeminism revisited: Rejecting essentialism and re-
placing species in a material feminist environmentalism. Feminist Formation,
23(2), 26–53.