UKC

The Herstory articles have uncovered the hidden history of women's mountaineering and climbing, from the early ladies who chased up British peaks in the 1700s, to the forgotten women making first ascents in 1800s alpinism. Later came extreme athletes, Wanda Rutkiewicz and Alison Hargreaves, and stories of how climbing is progressing equality and women's empowerment, through the Indigenous Cholita climbers of Bolivia and Lhakpa Sherpa.

The final piece examines the professionalisation of women in the mountains and across the climbing sector. How have we developed as guides, instructors, route-setters and coaches – and what does this reflect about where our mountain culture is today?

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Disappointing to see an equal number of down votes to up votes for the article at present - I find it tricky to understand what the issue is with the article?

Lou was my guide for the Conville course in Chamonix last summer. She was phenomenonal and I cannot understate the boost that had on my confidence for alpine climbing, to the extent that myself and another woman on the course then went out and did a route by ourselves after the course, something I had never done before in the Alps, having only climbed with my male partner. 

The old adage of "you can't be what you can't see" rings loudly for me everytime I'm out at a crag in winter and find I'm the only woman there. I have stayed at the CIC before when there have been at least 20 men and just one woman, young 22 year old (at the time) me.

Role models such as Lou and seeing more women guiding makes a massive difference to young climbers, thank you Anna for highlighting the space still left to cover. 

I spent some weeks in the 1990s in the Alps with Brede Arkless as a guide, when she was contracted to Martin Moran, who I know from conversat In subsequent years had a lot of respect for Brede. She was the first female UIAGM guide. Whilst she had somewhat of a fearsome reputation I found her to be safe, interested and interesting and I learned a huge amount from her, and we got on with on a personal level too. A great guide and character in every respect. 

The stats mentioned in the article are interesting, though perhaps predictable. Let’s hope the position improves over time.

A related area which the article doesn’t touch on is that there are now a lot more female pro and semi-pro climbers than there were 20-30 years ago. The role of social media in the climbing world is a topic in its own right, but one of the positives is that it helps top level female climbers to act as role models. On a related point, it would be interesting to know what proportion of UKC news articles over the past 2-3 years have featured women. These things all add up and help drive change over time.

Just to add, I started the BMG training scheme alongside Lou. Whilst I failed the summer rock assessment and gave up after deciding it was going to be too hard for me, Lou went on to qualify with first time passes all round. She’s certainly a much better mountaineer and skier than I ever will be. Reading that some clients try to outpace her was amusing - there’s a lot more to being a BMG than being able to walk fast, or bear down hard on a crimp, for that matter…

Best not to ask. There are always a few dicks on here who do this. They won't post to say what their problem is, but you probably wouldn't want to hear it anyway. The same thing happened with a really good article by an autistic climber a while back. So it's not just women they have a problem with.

It's now showing far more likes than dislikes, and well deserved too.

I personally have no issue with the article but it is comments like this that do keep people from talking openly about concerns they might have. I've no idea why somebody would downvote this but by politely inviting constructive discussion we can draw out honest feedback and talk about it. Lets not strawman anybody until we know what their issue is.

I learnt on here some time back that having your view challenged is a good thing, it either reinforces your opinion or allows you to develop a more accurate position.

I knew Brede a bit. She wasn't everyone's cup of tea but I thought she was lovely and enjoyed her company. She was very kind and engaged if you weren't a presumptuous alpha, if you were then best of luck because she didn't suffer fools or take prisoners. I witnessed her verbally reducing a then well-known Scottish winter hardman to a jelly after he'd unwittingly dismissed the route her clients had just done as trivial. She must have had a lot of shit to deal with in becoming a guide along with raising, iirc, eight children (someone correct me if I'm wrong) because even in the early 90s it was very much a man's world. Sadly, the article suggests that it hasn't changed as much as we might assume.  

Excellent article, thank you. Having been the sole woman on an alpine course which just didn't really think about female participants, I'd definitely welcome more women in the industry. The ones I've met through things like WTF and WAAC have been fabulous. Thank you. 

Lots of cool things happening this winter:

Women’s Alpine Adventure Club Scottish meets; 9-10March, 12-14March, 16-17March

Girls on Hills/Abacus women’s weekend: 9-10March 

Glenmore Lodge Wild Ski weekend: 16-17March

Plas y Brenin women’s winter skills: 20-22March 

I also think it’s important to know that there are some excellent allies who are making a huge effort to make their instruction more inclusive for all types of people. Events like the Women’s Trad Festival and ClimbOut festival employed allies (people from the majority who want to support): it’s the only way to make our landscape more diverse because otherwise the pressure is heaped upon the minority of role models in each diverse category, Lou and Tamsin are a prime example. I worked at the ClimbOut Festival and learned so much about making climbing and the outdoors more welcoming. I thought I knew my stuff about diversity and inclusivity but there is so much more to learn. 

Some thoughts. I've climbed with a number of guides over the last 20 years, including several of the female guides mentioned in the article, and would say that theres definitely a more chilled out atmosphere climbing with a female guide vs. male which I enjoy a lot (though I don't have a preference for male/female guides to be honest and sometimes it depends on the guide). And it would of course be great to see more female guides in the mountains, but after reading the article I am still wondering whether it will be truly possible to achieve "gender equality" within the mountain guiding/instructing profession or even match the proportion of female mountain professionals to the propotion of females participating in the different areas of mountain activities. Without trying to be too pessimistic my feeling is that the imbalance between female and male mountain professionals probably won't be solved but can perhaps be attributed to the fact that a much smaller proportion of women actually *want* to become mountain guides/instructors - or they don't believe they are or can become comptetent enough to be one. From my experience there are many, many women who enjoy participating in the whole range of mountain activities - whether it be rock climbing, alpine climbing, hill walking, ski touring etc but I have met very few who would actually want to do it for a living and I think that's OK. I personally have never given leadership in the mountains a thought since I wouldn't want a job that requires working in the mountains in all types of weather.... That the women at the Mountain Training conference wanted to "know about everything that comes with making it as an outdoors professional" isn't really much of a surprise given that they had chosen to attend a Mountain Train conference, but I doubt this represents the interests of the large majority of women who actually participate in mountain activities.

Anyway, interesting read and sorry to sound a bit negative!

I think one aspect is the cultural norm that women are primary caregivers both to children and older relatives. I have worked for 17 years as an outdoor instructor and mountain leader. Time and time again I see young women starting in the industry, and then getting pregnant and either moving to administration roles or leaving the industry completely. 

I note that one of the guides in the article has raised many children, so obviously it can be done. However, the days are long, you are frequently away from home for several nights at a time etc, so in order to juggle working in the mountains and a having children, you need a partner who is willing to take up lots of slack or family nearby who are willing to help. 

I have personally never experienced any prejudice or misogyny in the industry. Not from employers, colleagues or clients. My gender doesn't cross my mind other maybe more of an awareness of different climbing movement and rucksack fitting etc. Of course, this isn't to say that others haven't either. Just my personal experience.

The highest I have gone in the award structure is WML, and I doubt I will go further. I work too much in the summer to really get any significant amount of personal climbing done to progress further. I'm at the stage of life where I am valuing financial stability and so I don't want to reduce my workload to get higher tickets. 

I've had the "you can't be what you can't see" discussion a number of times with people who either just didn't get it or had never considered it. 

For myself as a non-white male I, I've never encountered a guide/instructor who looked like me and I think I can probably count on one hand the number of climbers I know of who do. It hasn't stopped me doing stuff but I know that's not the case for all.

​It's good to see a rise in the visibility and number of female climbers and outdoor professionals. Inspiring those who think if they can do it I can too. And showing those who think certain groups shouldn't or can't do it (because sadly we know this mindset exists), that they most certainly can.

Yeah I think this aspect plays a role, but I've also met a lot of women who are more than capable of gaining some sort of mountain leadership qualification and who haven't gone down the road of starting a family either but are nevertheless are more than happy just participating in mountain based activities in their free time. 

Having said that, most of my experience of meeting women in mountain sports is from living in Northern Norway so I don't know if that makes a difference either; there are some instructed courses in trad and ice climbing, avalanche safety and also some organised activites with the local mountaineering group offered but mostly people just go out and gain experience independently or from friends, so perhaps there is also less of an emphasis on leadership qualifications in general...

Yes. I recognise the benefits of diversity in pretty much all things and would like to see more women become guides if they want to, with any of the stupid old barriers removed. But it's not like promoting diversity and participation in the overall workforce, or in education etc which is an issue of genuine social justice. Is there really a proven need and benefit to have gender parity in climbing guides? It's a voluntary activity, and quite a dangerous one at that. We should be very careful about how much we encourage anyone into serious climbing in all ways, not just guiding. There is a lot of 'positive' boosterism in climbing these days, especially in the DEI area, often pushed by big gear companies with their eye on growing their customer base and ticking boxes on CSR/ESG/DEI requirements. It's also essentially a private sector commercial activity, so the market will decide, regardless of what an ethics committee decrees.

And I'm sorry you feel you have to apologise for stating simple common sense, even if you doing so kinda proves my point.

Yep, I don't think I had ever met a female ML or WML before my assessment for each. I also don't think it ever crossed my mind. I just went into the mountains and did my thing. I guess it's just some people bother more than others about societies expectations and norms. 

At the end of my first year of my undergraduate degree, when I would have been 19, I suggested to a friend that we could walk the West Highland Way. She had never done any serious walking before, but was keen for it. So I helped her find all the kit she needed, I carried the full tent and stove to keep the weight down for her and we set off to do it. We avoided campsites most of the way, just wild camping. It never crossed my mind that people might consider this unusual. I think it was on the 3rd or 4th day that someone commented to us that it was unusual to see just two females walking it, particularly while carrying all our kit. I was a bit bemused but then started to notice the groupings we saw. It was all guys, or male and female groups. 

This was over 20 years ago and I do feel the norms have changed now and people wouldn't be surprised to see us. 

I sometimes muse that right back then, I was a guide without even realising that I was. 

For sure, every society will have differences in how things like this are perceived. I'm sure there are loads of different factors at play in Norway than there is here

My partner who is quite competent in winter, summer, rock, ice, alpine etc.. but hasn't ever done any qualification in her life, took a female friend to the ice factor in the centre's earlier days, there were a few looks and leading questions about if they'd needed an instructor to help before they'd even reached the ice. Which was pretty poor considering both national centres by then had multiple female MICs/guides, she was polite but left them in no doubt. To her the outdoors is recreation, her free time and has never considered making it a career, she'll help friends raise their game, but that's where it stops.

Maybe it's psychological, men are generally greater risk takers (under 25 driving stats..) perhaps average Julie isn't prepared to risk a career change, cv gaps, low wages, as much as average joe. 

My feeling is that this is the case for the majority of women who enjoy spending time in the mountains

Not sure these are among the main reasons for women not choosing a mountain instructor/guide career. Maybe the best way to find out is to do a survey and ask

Agree on all these points - not sure why you got the dislikes (?). If more women *genuinely* want a career in mountain guiding/instruction, then they should be encouraged to do so, but there shouldn't be a push to get more women into mountain leadership just to improve the statistics.

Agreed. 

I don't inherently *need* to have a female guide when I'm doing courses, but I do need guides who think about female clients, and don't treat me differently for being a woman (other than where needed because my biology needs a different approach) and sadly my experience is that this doesn't always happen, even with the most reputable organisations. 

Men are perfectly capable of learning these things - when recommending kit for your clients, think about where they can buy kit that fits a woman's body, don't just give male-oriented advice; when roping your group up for several hours, make time for the women to go to the loo beforehand so they don't end up with dehydration at altitude; don't act terrified of any reference to women's health and managing menstruation or menopause in the mountains; don't make passing sexist comments about other women in front of the only female client in your group; don't hold the female clients to a different standard - my experience really soured what should have been an excellent opportunity to build skills and confidence, and left me really doubting my own competence - something which most women are more than capable of without male intervention. Sadly I don't think overestimating men and underestimating women is unique to one guide.

Male guides *can* absolutely learn all of these things. But unfortunately, experience suggests that they don't always do so, and dealing with this is both an inefficient use of our time and exhausting.

Likewise, I've seen female guides on one weekend course having to deal with sexist nonsense from random men both days at the crag. They have my utmost respect. 

Agreed - it's extremely rare amongst my climbing friends to want children, so I don't think the caregiver argument is really the barrier for my generation. Older ones, sure.

You rightly note that promoting participation in the workforce and education is important. Guiding is a job, so workforce considerations apply. It’s also education, both for those training to be instructors / guides and for those who they go on to instruct / guide. 

The part you emphasised with italics strikes me as a really weird thing to say. Have you ever seen anybody even vaguely hint at the idea that we should strive for perfect gender balance for climbing guides even if we have to force women to work as guides against their will? Of course not. It's entirely about removing barriers and encouraging people to consider it as an option.

I don't see how it's categorically different from any other workplace. I can certainly see arguments that climbing guiding is less crucial to the function of society than some jobs and that having a good number of, say, female doctors, has more concrete benefits than a good number of female climbing guides. But I don't think that stops it from still being a "genuine" social justice issue.

How would you possibly prove such a thing? You could perhaps survey women climbing with male and female guides to measure their experience, but regardless of the results of that survey, it still comes down to a value judgement about how important their experiences were. Is there even a proven need and benefit to having any climbing guides in the first place? As you point out, it increases participation in a fundamentally risky endeavour.

I share some of your cynicism about the attitudes of the companies who get behind diversity campaigns. I suspect the actual motivations of the people personally involved in decision-making at the companies are often quite genuine, but I'm sure there's an element of cynical market growing as well. But when I look at all the awful destructive habits of corporations around the world, I'm not going to get too upset about one area where they might be partially motivated by profit but are being pushed towards a positive goal anyway.

And the increasing number and visibility of diversity initiatives in the outdoors is the market deciding. Regardless of whether we think the companies attaching their names to such things are cynical capitalists or relatively pure-hearted believers, I think we can agree that they wouldn't be doing very much at all if it cost them bad press and lots of money that they didn't think they'd get back.

What point do you think it proves? I don't see it tying in particularly strongly with anything in your previous paragraph. It doesn't seem particularly unnatural to me that Hannah might choose to close with a caveat if she felt like the overall tone of her post was more negative than she perhaps wanted. I've certainly done it before. I don't think it implies, as you might be suggesting(?), that it's somehow impossible to have a reasonable debate about this topic.

There've been several anecdotes in the thread along these lines but I don't think it sheds very much light on the topic because of course this is also the case for the vast majority of male climbers.

I'm prepared to accept that this might be the case. But in the absence of any strong evidence for it, I don't see any harm in trying to encourage more balance and seeing where it gets us. It might be the case that all kinds of gender disparities are down to genuine innate differences between men and women, but for as long as society continues to impose different expectations from the moment a baby is born, it's incredibly difficult to untangle so we might as well lean towards trying to balance things out where we can and see where that gets us because the best case is a huge win and I don't see that there's much of a worst case at all. (Unless someone was suggesting imposing careers on people, which of course nobody is.)

Totally agree, as a parent of a teenage boy and girl I despair that schooling or education system decides what is girls clothing, or boys: girls sports and boys sports etc... it entrenches stereotypes from near birth as you say. Add in disparities between mat/paternity leave and on it goes. We are so far behind the times in Victorian Britain. 

I think the point Damo is getting at here (or at least how I interpreted it) is that the article seems to suggest that the present statistics showing an imbalance in mountain leadership qualifications between males/females is somehow unacceptable, and that there is a gap that needs to be "fixed". I can understand that having more female guides available might bring about a better experience for some people, but the question is whether it is really necessary to try and achieve gender parity.

Against their will? Of course not. 'Encouraged' into a guiding-type position before they were ready (two years experience total) in the name of promoting women leaders in climbing, yes.

I see an industry imperative to be overwhelmingly 'positive' on these issues and anything less is 'negative'. I think there is room in between. This thread is an example of a decent discussion on this matter. But I look at climbing internationally and have seen many more discussions in US climbing and here in Australia that can't accept any questioning or nuance and stubbornly push more polarised narratives. I will deliberately not provide examples.

I think I know more female 'mountain professionals' than male...

Well parity was mentioned in the article, but only as an obvious point of comparison rather than a target. The only hard target that was mentioned, and repeatedly referred back to, was matching leadership qualifications to general participation, which is significantly different.

Yeah OK thats true. But I still feel like even this target of matching qualifications to participation is somewhat arbitrary and ought to be based more on demand rather than hitting certain numbers. If every female participating in different aspects of mountain activities are actually requesting a female leader, then fair enough - the targets are appropriate, but I suspect this isn't necessarily the case.

I personally don't mind if I am led/guided by a male or female as long as whoever it is has a good sense of humour (even at a 1am alpine start) and we have a good laugh. In my experience both genders are capable, and also not capable of that!

I have no idea how many female clients request a female guide, or how many wish they could but don't think it would be an option, or how many don't even want it but would find they benefitted if it happened. But even if we had perfect data on all of those things, I think it's oversimplifying to suggest that it's the only relevant metric anyway. There are loads of other reasons having more female climbing guides might be beneficial, and it doesn't even have to be about female clients.

Representation and visibility have already been discussed on the thread. Maybe female and male clients would learn differently from female guides. Maybe male guides would learn some things from having female colleagues. It's not even necessarily about the women being different as guides, maybe there's just an untapped group of great female guides that aren't going into the profession because they don't think it's for them and they benefit by finding a great career for themselves.

I don't disagree that the target numbers are somewhat arbitrary. But ultimately I would see the number as only a measuring tool rather than the fundamental goal. The real goal, I would think, is just to minimise the barriers.

That’s a bit like saying there isn’t a specific demand for equal numbers of doctors or accountants or whatever. Whether or not there is a demand isn’t really the point. It’s about gender equality in the workplace. 

Not sure what the dislikes are for; I am very happy and lucky I know so many, and it was an entirely positive comment. I used quotes because they have many different titles and roles.

One thing I feel would be good to have more female representation is for DofE groups. Girls are often worried about how to deal with their period in the hills. They are unlikely to ask male instructors and many male instructors don't know the answer or aren't comfortable discussing it. I have educated male leaders as well as female participants on many occasions. 

Also, even with adult groups, I often announce that I am going to pee. It makes it more normal and something to not be ashamed of or worried about. 

So I guess those would be reasons to increase the numbers of female leaders, as it could bolster confidence. But this is at entry level rather than alpine guiding 

This gets talked about on all the MLs I run even if it’s a male only group. Hopefully we can chip away and normalise toilet and period chat but I guess female participants are always going to be more comfortable chatting to female leaders about it, understandably.

Ok I think you've made some good points, maybe some of which should have been included in the article instead of quite a heavy focus on the statistics. I'll shut up now

I agree, and think this would be even more useful in alpine guiding - my experience gave me constant anxiety about when I would next to be able to go to the loo as I didn't know what we would be doing next - and thus, was afraid of drinking anything, when dehydration is an issue at altitude. My guide never thought about the fact I couldn't just easily pee when roped up, asked where I was going when we finally stopped and unroped, and constantly chivvied us (but waiting for the blokes to have a wee in harness was fine). With a female guide (or just a more thoughtful male one) I could have asked - we're all used to dealing with this when climbing after all. Likewise my GP was useless on whether you could take meds to manage menstruation at altitude (given risk of clotting).

I believe there was a case of a woman actually falling to her death because she tried to find somewhere discreet to go to the loo and slipped over an edge. We need female guides to normalise these things, including being a female leader in the mountains, and we need guides all to be aware that women and men are different, and stop making us feel like a burden for it. It would be even worse for anyone with difficult medical needs. The stiff upper lip macho attitude in mountaineering helps with some things when the going gets tough, but it also makes the going unnecessarily tough for a lot of us.

As I read your first paragraph I was thinking about just this, Kei Taniguchi, first woman to win a Piolet d'Or. The anniversary of her death was last week.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_Taniguchi_(mountaineer)

https://alpinist.com/features/pandoras-box-the-brief-brilliant-life-of-kei-...

They even skirt around the nature of her actions - she was going for a pee - in this piece: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/25/kei-taniguchi-pioneering-fema...

I had no idea it was someone famous. Thanks for sharing. 

In all my years as a woman mountaineering and climbing I’ve never had a problem going for a pee and never ever made myself unsafe to do so. Just ask the men to turn round and look the other way. If you don’t trust the men or other people you’re with, you don’t climb with them.

In a petzl corax harness you can simply release the riser (thing that holds the leg loops up at the back) and pee or whatever and stay safely tied in. If you really want to you can undo the leg loops and take your trousers off still tied in.

There’s no need to make yourself unsafe or avoid drinking. We need to talk about these things and normalise normal bodily functions. 

I started doing DofE with a girls school, so a lot of the staff were female. Toiletting and periods are an obvious thing to need to discuss, so I always have, and, on the rare occasions when we had mixed groups, stressed the need for the boys to behave like 'gentlemen', and allow the girls privacy; an issue of trust and personal development/maturity, like so much other teamwork. I demonstrate the 'shimmy and shake', which breaks the ice...

You kindly sent me a copy of your 'Aunt Flo' notes, which added a couple of things to what I discuss.

My latest work has been with another girls school, and periods were discussed from the outset. I shared training with a female teacher, and we went through the options together. I prefer not to do the 'if you prefer to talk to a female staff member' thing, because that perpetuates the idea that there's a stigma to it.

Oh that's a surprise, Misha, I'd really assumed you'd have been wearing your sherriff's badge by now. I had no idea. But take heart, whilst it might have been a real bummer at the time given the time and energy and money that went into getting that far, it's almost certainly a blessing in disguise for you. The guides' workplace is shrinking, melting and falling down at such a rate that it's changing such that it will no longer resemble the job that you envisaged. Certainly vastly different to the one that it was 35 years ago when I received mine. I'd certainly not encourage any of my friends to go for it.

Thanks, I don’t regret trying and my best wishes to Lou, Polly and all the other guides but climate change is not making the job any easier. Another factor is the growing popularity of climbing - it means there are more potential clients but also the trade routes are busier. That said, guides can and will adapt to the changing environment. It’s just that in the Alps there are other people that need to adapt - lift companies and huts need to change their open seasons and of course clients need to be more flexible and be prepared to go outside of the traditional mid July to end of August season, go to different areas (i.e. not Cham) and be open to doing other things (e.g. technical rock climbing on non-glacial terrain if it’s not feasible to do classic Alpine mountaineering).

I think we are in a transitional phase at the moment where a lot of people, companies and organisations are in denial about what is happening and what adaptations are required (not just in the Alpine climbing world of course). In 10-20 years’ time things will be different as adaptation will be forced on people through lack of alternatives (e.g. I can’t see Scottish winter climbing or Alpine climbing in August being feasible for most of the time in 20 years’ time). But we digress from the topic at hand - albeit if guiding as a whole is getting harder, increasing female participation within guiding isn’t going to get any easier.