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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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Dec 18, 2009 - 04:53pm PT
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Correction: Stuff gets published that will draw eyeballs, incite people to respond, and cause people to click back to see how their own words were received. More traffic = more ad $.
I'm surprised that there was so much sound and fury over the critique here. I thought that user comments (often negative) and all of the repeat visitors clicking back to see the latest was part of the online news delivery business model?
I was happy to see piece on average women's climbing, albeit one that didn't seem to be researched or presented with a ton of care. A lot of us still struggle in those damn peticoats and like to see our options. I don't agree with all of the criticism, but it did seem extremely tame compared to the typicial reader comments that follow any article that I read in my local online newspaper. This thread barely even qualified as a Supertopo dog pile (not that I think those are so great).
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kwit
climber
california
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Dec 18, 2009 - 05:27pm PT
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i'm delighted to learn from so many of you that there is not and never was gender imbalance in the climbing community. certainly there isn't any on this forum. initially when i looked over the one of the "who in the hell are you people" self-portrait threads, i mistook the majority of those pictured for being male.
mea culpa. anecdotal evidence has no place on such a scientific forum; neither does evidence based on one's terribly myopic vision. cheers to all of the bearded ladies joining we women on here.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Dec 18, 2009 - 05:40pm PT
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For the mainstream media, and a less than stellar source (Fox) at that, it seems an OK piece. I disagree with their use of "extreme" in the title - arguably, a main reason why more women are now rock climbing is that it's no longer usually perceived as such, and rarely is extreme.
There were some very strong female climbers from this part of the world from the 1950s onward, including Elfrida Pigou, Esther Kafer, Alice Purdey, and later the Weed Farmer. As much or more mountaineers as rock climbers - the latter really wasn't something done in its own right until perhaps the 1980s. They undoubtedly have their own views as to what it was like, but I'd guess the proportion of those who regularly did roped climbing of any kind was 10%, at most 20%, female. The article is correct in identifying that that proportion has steadily risen since the 1970s, and may now approach parity. The M-F proportion of posters and posts on ST probably doesn't reflect that yet, although the M-F proportion of lurkers may.
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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Dec 18, 2009 - 05:49pm PT
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Parity at the gym. Getting closer to parity at the crag when you don't look at who is doing what. Women leading on more adventuresome climbs especially w/ each other, are still a rare sight (to my eyes) relative to men.
I always notice a woman who is on the sharp end on anything R/X or harder than 10 in Yosemite, and I still don't see her very often. Often when I do see her, I recognize her because she is famous.
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Cosimon
climber
Boulder, CO
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Dec 18, 2009 - 06:28pm PT
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“It was 10 to one, men to women. Now what I am seeing is 50/50,”
Nah, it seems more like 10 women to 1 guy these days... it's just a herd of women at the crags now.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 19, 2009 - 09:56pm PT
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Go girls! After watching the progress of "womens" gymnastics for 50 years, the future belongs to those graceful elfin creatures, flitting from bar to bar as from handhold to handhold. 200 pound guys: pack it up and head for the Himalayas!
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jan 29, 2010 - 03:29am PT
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The Baffin Babes presentation at VIMFF tonight was very entertaining and lively. They clearly had a good time with their 80 day traverse along the east coast of Baffin Island. http://www.baffinbabes.com/
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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Jan 29, 2010 - 03:33am PT
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definite parity at the gym. actually there were more women leaders than men most of the time I was there a week ago.
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Keeper of Australia Mt
Trad climber
Whitehorse, Yukon , Canada
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Our vision is always altered by the lens we view things through. Focal distance counts too. What maybe apparent close at hand may be radically distant some distance away. I wasn't active in climbing in my youth so whether or not there were less female climbers doing hard stuff then as now - depends on the perspective, location and lens. There have always been rad, amazing woman pushing the limits - just about everywhere. It may be the lens we are using now is different from the one used years ago -
Still waters run deep and I think if one did the research one would uncover some amazing stories and have a different perspective. As Tami and the Mighty Hiker note, without covering all of the high ground - in the Canadian Rockies and Coast Ranges - women have always been doing amazing things - pull a copy of Chic Scott's " Pushing the Limits - The Story of Canadian Mountaineering" and other volumes and it starts to come into focus. I suspect it is the tip of the berg. Their motives might be slightly different but their results are up there with the guys. Louise Sheppard was on par and setting the pace even with the blokes down under - in her prime and she still goes out and climbs hard stuff with other women - in fact I recall, she even hooked up with the Boonah phenom who got me into the game a few years back. Abby Watkins, another Aussie is up there and on it goes. Sue Nott and Karen Macneil on the Infinite Spur - those women could probably out perform 99%
of the men on the planet and they have lots of company - how about those denizens "Chicks With Picks". Amazing women and it is great to see these individuals doing their thing in the way they want to do it. I don't feel particularly threatened by it all - au contraire - I cheer them on . Go for it! I admire their skills, tenacity, and zeal for life. They are the latest in a long lineage of amazing women climbers even going back to early JTree and Yosemite days. Sometimes the perspectives we gain are marred by our sampling methods and various biases, systemic and otherwise, that we all bring to the game.
And some of males need a few slaps in the head to staighten put our brain cells into better alignment. I recall a guy ( a climber)
I worked for on an archaeology dig in the Barrengrounds of the Keewatin - ranting that women couldn't do Arctic Archaeology because they couldn't pack a 10 galleon fuel drum a mile through the tundra - as if that was the defining characteristic of Arctic Archaeology. It was nonsense then as now , and fortunately few females took him seriously , as well as the younger male members of his crew. While some of his attidude may well have been "stirrin the possum" a large part was just male stupidity. In any case, in the 30 or so years I have involved in northern fieldwork, lots of smart, dynamic and extremely capable young and old women have proved up on how really dumb his attitudes really were. Women have had to put up with this sort of nonsense for a longtime and to their credit they smile and just go out and do amazing things. I always tell my daughter to never let others (and particularly men) define her success or interests- she can bloody well do whatever she wants and she controls her destiny and success. Reach for your dreams, live your passions - settle for nothing less and as men we would collectively wear it a lot better if we were more supportive and more respectful. Many are but you know what I mean. The notion that these women who are into hard climbing and who climb together are "going extreme" is fairly bizarre as it seems to imply that they are anomalies and that it really isn't their place. This would be absolute bs of course - the toughest routes, the highest mountains, - that is all a woman's place - alongside the men. They have proven it from the earliest days and continue to lead by example - for their husbands, partners, brothers, fathers and so on. Good on them. And they do it with a sense of humour which is highly spectacular!
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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
You wanted to!
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I've always thought that the girls were extreme.
Extreme!
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