Issues in Adventure Education: Gender Disparity

In our American culture, we typically associate adventure, risk, and danger with men and masculinity. The foundation of that association is sexism - whether intentional or not. As educators, we must pay close attention to our words, our actions, and how those effect the learning and experiences of all of our participants, regardless of gender.

The fact of the matter is that gender is not the defining factor in many of the issues that we make it out to be. Strength, intelligence, emotional capacity, group interaction, teamwork, and approach to learning are all things which cannot be reasonably separated by gender. It should be understood, then, that making your activities more "girly" or "emotional" is not an effective or appropriate response to having women in your classroom. Paying close attention to the culture within your class is important to ensure that no student feels restricted or limited. Unfortunately, that is often the case, as research has shown us that women-only groups often feel more comfortable talking about issues together. It would be foolish to assume that this is because women are "naturally cliquey" or "better at talking about feelings." Instead, we should be looking at the reason women may feel less comfortable in a typical classroom.

Wilderdom (as usual) has an excellent page on gender issues: http://wilderdom.com/Gender.htm