Girls, Girls, Girls

Mick Ryan

20th July, 2006

This has been read 2,658 times

A survey by the BMC has found that female participation in climbing has risen nearly 10% in the last six years. The survey conducted by the BMC to fullfill requirements to achieve the Sport's Council's Equality Standard was distributed in Summit magazine and to a random 10% of BMC membership. The male to female split is now 72% male, 25% female (3% did not answer). The BMC found that majority of climbers are male, white, Christian and aged between 25 and 44. You can view the results here.

This rise in women participation is also reflected in more women's organisations and companies in the climbing world, one of the latest being Mountain Girl set up by Chamonix-based climber Louise Alexander who offer guided instruction for women in winter climbing, bouldering, alpine climbing and mountaineering.

Further at next weeks Outdoor Show at Friedrichshafen, Germany, women are the central theme of this years show with a series of events and lectures planned, and a survey called 'Outdoor Woman' available. The OutDoor Show claims that “40 percent of all climbers are female.” Visitors to the OutDoor 2006 will be able to discover just what "The OutDoor Woman" looks like at a special show during the event. UKClimbing will be reporting back to you and will reveal all.

This post has been read 2,658 times

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Comments

rallymania

20 Jul, 2006

just about eveybody i climb with just now is a woman.... ie mostly you :-)

gingerkate

20 Jul, 2006

Interesting that the BMC puts the number of women climbers at 25% and teh Outdoor Show puts it at 40%. That's quite a big disparity. I wonder if that means that women don't join the BMC as much as men, for whatever reason. I wonder how the Outdoor Show got its figures... if based on sales it may not accurately reflect participation I suppose.

martin riddell

20 Jul, 2006

then BMC equates to joing a climbing "club" the Outdoors Show equates to shopping that might explain the disparity in nr's

dpmUK

20 Jul, 2006

What's the point of doing these surveys (I mean other than ensuring the BMC continues to get funding)? Surely they should be finding whether the system is fair to women rather than looking how many there actually are. My oft quoted example is that you're not going to get many Muslims doing a wine making course, but that doesn't mean that the course providers are racist or doing anything wrong, it just means that there's not many Muslims that would want to do a wine making course. As long as the procedures etc are fair and they're not being discrimaneted against then surely everything is OK. Whats to be gained by finding out the actual numbers from various group partaking? I'll get down of my soap box now!

dpmUK

20 Jul, 2006

This is what I meant by my last post - just getting the numbers tell us nothing about why the disparity is there which is surely more important.

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