UKC

Since the lockdown easing I seem to have been going sport climbing more than my norm, which at my lowly level means the old quarries of the Peak District and their dubious delights of wobbly holds and industrial detritus! I have been struck by what a high proportion of women climbers I've seen this summer - this is my sixth being local to the Peak and I think my 29th year of regular climbing! Yesterday I went to  Harpur Hill Quarry for the first time in years and I think every other team we saw but one were mixed male/female. There might have been some all women teams too but I didn't see them. Perhaps not unconnected, the friend I was climbing with is female too! It must have been 50/50 male/female at the crag yesterday or very close to it.

I'm sure last summer at similar crags it wasn't quite that equal and it's not at trad cliffs I regularly climb at in the Peak. At Stanage on a nice evening I reckon it's more like a quarter to a third female to male climbers? Similar at Birchen when I've visited a couple of times in recent weeks.

Is participation in sport climbing higher for women? Is this an effect of the lockdown closure of walls? Has female participation gone up in the last year unconnected to the lockdown? Is this just a thing on Peak limestone or is it happening on Gower and Yorkshire limestone and Scottish sports crags etc. etc. too? 

I imagine we'll be trending in that direction anyway, but lockdown rules have resulted in cohabiting climbing couples finding it the easiest to get back out again, so will be over represented at the crag from the norm.

What Ciro said. However there has definitely been a big increase in women at climbing walls over the last few years and it's also likely many of them have started climbing outside in the last few weeks.

Edit: I hope they don't get the idea all outside climbing is like Horseshoe and Harpur Hill!

I’ve also noticed a massive increase in the number of women out running too. I can go days without seeing a man running but every day several women run local to me ( fortunately they tend to run in the opposite direction around our village or I suspect I would be being overtaken on a regular basis, they all seem to run fast!) and that is the same when I’m at work on Tyneside. Been trying to use the visible increase to persuade my better half to start running again.... to no avail though. 

A similar uptake in my area. I live on the edge of big, wild woodland, nature reserve etc. I'm not sure girls are outnumbering boys, however I thought many were fast and thought it strange until closer inspection revealed two things. 1. A majority don't know how to run correctly and their paces are very short and 2. you can hear them coming from a way off.

Probably good news for the physio's and big pharma ;(

I couldn't say I'd really noticed any trends in our area in terms of who you see running, it seems to vary day to day. However, I notice that when run in the hills, I often get fairly high up the women's scoreboards on Strava. I'm not that fast, and presume there are fewer women recording on Strava, although whether this is the same as fewer women running in the hills, I couldn't say! 

We chatted with a team who had driven down from Leeds, although interestingly they were saying it takes them no longer than getting to the Yorkshire limestone cliffs up in the Yorkshire Dales. It's only my second visit to Harpur Hill in almost 6 years of living not that far away. It's superficially ugly, but the views out are actually rather fine, and if you are climbing in the 5s and 6s there is a massive selection of routes to go at. Same for Horseshoe really. You get great butterflies and some interesting flowers at Horseshoe and the grassy bits at Harpur yesterday were just a sea of white and yellow - types of daisy and buttercup I think although I'm lousy at remembering flowers even after I look them up!

There definitely seems to be people climbing outside now who perhaps would have been indoor climbers previously. I think that's great to see.

Fair point although I didn't start doing a survey to find out who was with their partner and who was just climbing with a friend of the opposite gender. I've been trying to persuade anyone in my household to climbing with me, but neither my partner nor either of my teenage kids want to come - the only enthusiasm has been from the nearly 3-year old, but I'm not convinced of his belaying skills yet!

Genuinely thought this was going to be another UKC trans thread...

Probably used to running on a treadmill and it will be interesting to see how many go back to indoor facilities post lockdown.

Are you Harry Enfield, and is there a £5 prize? 

I'm sure any women running would just love to be told the don't know how to run correctly.

I thought over striding was bad form. 

I've not yet been to HH this year. A couple of months ago we couldn't drive through the village because of the crazy traffic. Total chaos! I was the put off by the wierd popularity of The Blue Lagoon. Then came the slurry spreading! So - how was it yesterday? Is it safe and not-too-smelly to visit? I actually do like the place, the outlook and many of the routes! I'd love to hear!

Absolutely nothing wrong with it at all. A few bits of litter but really not much. You could see bits of straw that must have been in the slurry spreading, but it wasn't smelly at all. It's been a few weeks with plenty of rain since then. 

That's good to know! Thanks

Whaaa?  I clearly stated that there was no predominance in the gender of local runners. How have you managed to extract exclusively 'female' to grind your axe? EDIT: I can see how that would be misinterpreted there are definitely ladies with admirable technique in my hood!

Of course overstriding is bad form, however, so is understriding and heavy feet. Apologies as I clearly wasn't clear myself for the majority. My comment was addressing the apparent speed of runners and I wondered if their technique gave that impression.

If one was to watch Kipchoge for example or Rushida, one might get the impression that they were merely jogging, where in fact they are running faster than many peoples maximum speed. Point being, technique can give a false impression, whether good or bad.

Hi Toby, I think the difference is most likely down to you visiting sport climbing venues, and nothing to do with coronavirus. I've sometimes been struck by the higher female participation level when I go to sport crags compared to trad. 

I always used to run inside as I got shouted at by men all the time when running outside, which I didn't like.  I feel a lot more comfortable running outside now and I get shouted at quite rarely.  I think more women exercising outside will probably become more normalised the more we see other women doing it.  I think the shift in climbing has been happening gradually over the last few decades but probably has been speeded up by Covid.

The thing is you can come across a group of 5 men climbing, that's the norm. You see 5 women climbing and think 'hey look an all female team'. And on trad days you'll see men climbing with women but its usually the men still doing the leading.

Not that there couldn't be progress, but take a hypothetical example of a group of 3 men and 3 women climbers, seems equal and representative on the surface. But it's the men trying the harder routes, who are reading the guidebooks, who own the equipment, and organised the trip. So I think sometimes it can look representative on the surface if you just count heads but it doesn't mean it isn't a male dominated sport still in content.

Who does the harder routes is a separate issue to participation level. Who's guidebook, equipment and planning it is would be difficult to ascertain just from meeting folk at the crag. 

But I get the point you are making in your first paragraph. On the hill, or at the crag, for a 2 person group 2 guys is nearly always the most common finding, followed by 1 man and 1 woman, with 2 women being comparatively rare, though perhaps the situation is improving. When I go indoors or to sport crags it sometimes seems close to 50:50.

Thank goodness us female climbers have men to do those complicated things like reading the guide, buying the equipment and organising our trips... I just don't know how we'd get by without them.

Maybe different in the UK, but a 2019 survey in the US by the outdoor industry showed female participation in climbing at 58%. 

Anecdotally,  this is what I see at the climbing gym, and at the sport and trad crags in the American West. I also see no difference in equipment ownership or propensity to organise trips and virtually none in grades climbed.

As for running, local result sheets for 10k and half marathons typically show 60+% female participation.

Tbh when I am climbing with my boyfriend I often feel invisible.

He climbs one grade harder than me but we normally lead 50-50. 

Often people pass by us only say hi to him,  no matter if he is in front of me or behind me. Or men start asking him how hard the route was and how it felt climbing it whilst I lead it.He regularly gets asked if he would recommend  'his' bouldering mats, rope etc - I own them. 

There is still plenty of unconscious bias outdoors. 

To be fair, I think this is an observation of how it often is, not how it can and should be.

I get amused when I am guiding walking groups and someone asks one of my male clients for information. For starters, most of my clients don't speak English, so they don't even know what they have been asked and they often wouldn't know the answer anyway! Lol. It's always amusing to watch the poor client look a bit baffled and point them my way! 

Do you mean by that, that over half of all climbers in the US are female? If so that's remarkable, and excellent. Or does it mean that women are participating at 58% of the level men are?

The former - 58% of climbers are female.

Do those stats apply to gyms or all climbing? It's not our experience on US SW trad or alpine trad, albeit numbers and attitudes over there do seem better than in the UK. I'd confirm the experience of women above, especially in a black humour sense when being (as I often am) a male partner of a more widely experienced and way more important female climbing partner.

Are we allowed to call it black humour anymore? I'm sort of half amused, half serious. What would be used instead.

Do you ask any questioners whether they're members of BMC 😁

Sorry but how do you know this  level of detail about groups of people you have just seen out climbing? I say this having sat over a beer in groups including various women who climb far harder than their male partners, while some bloke in the group has explained to us how in general the man in a partnership is usually the stronger climber. 

Yes apologies I misquoted. Looks like 58% of gym climbers are female and 51% outdoor bouldering/sport. 

As for trad, it does vary by location too. I'd say Indian Creek feels like 50-50 to me and big alpine routes probably a long way off that as yet.

This is my source if anyone is interested: https://runoutpodcast.com/index.php/2020/02/11/runout-37-male-dominated-no-...

I have many similar tales - that have happened to me or people I know (and fairly recently), but I guess it's not that surprising given how things are generally in society.  My fave is a friend (considerably younger than me) who was with another woman somewhere on the Cuillin Ridge and was told by a man that he was sure they could do the full ridge if they "brought a man with them to do the rope work". Ha ha.

Here's a good counter story: the daughter of a female climber asked "mummy, do men go climbing too?" The answer was yes, of course they do. Child pondered and then said "yes, but do they lead?" Not sure if that story has been embellished in the telling but I love it, not least because it suggests that we can change things in ways that widens the possibilities for young people.

I've come to think that many women grow up, and come to climbing, with the idea that it's a man's activity (in theory, or in practice, or both). Even if they're challenging that idea, I think many women start out kind of battling against the notion of climbing as something that is a 'male' thing (rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reasons).  As I began to notice this it made me reflect on my own upbringing and introduction to climbing. My dad has climbed since the 1950s and, although I didn't get into climbing myself until I was in my mid-30s, I didn't get the impression that it was a 'blokes thing' (although obviously I was well aware of other things being seen in highly gendered ways). I think my dad was disappointed that I didn't take to climbing when I was younger. Crucially, it never occurred to me that being a girl was a valid excuse for my failings.  I grew up hearing about people like Lyn Hill and Catherine Destivelle.  My dad's partner, who has been around since I was about 15 was a climbing woman (and always seemed to me to be a climber in her own right, so to speak).  And my dad climbed with and knew other women climbers. I think those things had a big impact on me.  Over the years since I started climbing, I felt that I was meeting many other women who'd grown up with a different message (implict or explicit) and then I ended up thinking I had maybe been a bit naive for not expecting that. I'm not assuming my experience has been unique, obviously, or trying to make claims about stuff beyond my own experience. Just my own musings really about something I've noticed and found interesting.