Denise Mitten

Building the Group: Using Personal Affirming to Create Healthy Group Process

Kids needs are best met by grown-ups whose needs are met.

Connections, Compassion, and Co-healing: The Ecology of Relationships

In developed countries many people spend little time in direct contact with the more-than-human world and react with pervasive fear and mistrust of ‘nature’. This chapter explores repairing our relationships with the more-than-human world and enabling us to positively engage with the more-than-human world as we face complex and challenging decisions in the Anthropocene. Our relationships are entangled with all beings and natural systems, and the cosmos as an ecology of relationships. Ecofeminism provides a framework for changing the patterns of violence, which means changing our relationships, in order to heal. Women’s outdoor programming by women has retained a way of being and an attitude towards the outdoors guided by an ethic of care and an understanding of entanglement. Drawing from this history and experience, outdoor leaders, skilled in healthy relationship building, can support participants exploring and repairing their relationships with the more-than-human world including stopping criticism, defensiveness, and contempt. Thoughtfully designed outdoor education programs can provide transformative, paradigm shifting experiences that help participants connect to the more-than-human world from a place of compassion and awe counteracting negative images and fear of ‘nature’ that result from western narratives. Instead of seeing the more-than-human world as something to be controlled, they see it as part of themselves and understand our need for healthy affiliation with the more-than-human world on the visceral level. Appreciative inquiry helps grow a relationship system of fondness and admiration grounded in gratitude and respect, which when done at the individual, family, community, and universal (including the more-than-human) arenas adds to sustainability.

The invisibility cloak : women's contributions to outdoor and environmental education

ABSTRACT Women leaders in outdoor environmental education (OEE) have begun to discuss the invisibility cloak that seems to envelope us. Women comprise approximately half the OEE professionals; however, women still face gender bias resulting in challenges of recognition and access to the upper echelons of the profession. Data show that implicit prejudice and limitations, arising from systematic hegemony and the gender binary, create an atmosphere that generally silences or ignores womens contributions and voices in media and history. As a collective group, our profession needs to actively challenge and positively change the forms of knowledge and recognition that render women invisible. Authors suggest that feminism and alternative discourses that have historically been marginalized or less visible can be used to replace and challenge current dominant narratives.

Defining Moments: An Examination of the Gender Divide in Women's Contribution to Outdoor Education

Abstract: Throughout our collective experiences in the outdoors, defining moments have helped ignite innovation and provided inspiration for women and men in the outdoor profession. Women’s representation among the ranks of the senior leaders and researchers in the outdoor field is disproportionately low. As such, women in outdoor education today still face challenges being recognized and accessing the upper echelons of the profession and academy. An incident at the 6th International Outdoor Education Research Conference in 2013, where women donned an invisibility cloak provided the impetus for our paper. Significant progress has been made in the past three decades; however an imbalance and gender asymmetry still exists today. At the core of our profession is the development of leadership and individual potential; it is therefore imperative that we examine our indiscernible footprint within the profession. The paper aims to generate practical solutions and strategies for those grappling with ways to improve their leadership impact and attain gender equity in their career goals.

Messages About Women Through Representation in Adventure Education Texts and Journals

The authors explore women’s representation in adventure education (AE) literature positing the question: what messages about women are manifest in the scholarly literature and during the publishing process in AE? Data were gathered using a feminist content analysis of five commonly used texts and through citation indices created for the Journal of Experiential Education and the Australian Journal of Outdoor Education. Citation frequency was compared between women and men authors. In the journals, women comprise about 25% of published authorships. Texts continue to use masculine normative language and stereotypical gender roles in examples, reinforcing a hidden curriculum. Women were underrepresented as authors and adventurers and in technical and nontechnical photos, whilst being the predominant authors of social justice writings.

Let’s Meet at the Picnic Table at Midnight

The author provides background about women’s outdoor trips using examples of early women’s expeditions, research, and observation. She describes differences in the aims of men and women as they designed boys’ and girls’ camps, respectively, from the late 1800s into the early 1900s. The author explains how women’s trips designed by women are often different from co-ed trips and why some women choose to go on all-women trips. Stereotypes of outdoor women and women’s outdoor trips are explored, and the concept and effects of lesbian baiting are discussed. The value of giving voice to more perspectives and ways of being in the outdoors is presented.

Nourishing Terrains: Women’s Contributions to Outdoor Learning Environments

This introductory chapter outlines the initial impetus for the Palgrave International Handbook of Women and Outdoor Learning, along with our quest to be proactive in pursuit of social change and equity. The authors recount a personal and historical perspective about the cultural and structural identity of women in outdoor learning, providing a snapshot of inroads made in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s towards gender equality. Recent advancements appear to have stalled or are becoming increasingly indiscernible or covert. The chapter’s through line is an exploration of the profession’s implicit prejudices and unconscious bias outlining the way women experience gender asymmetry in myriad ways. Re-storying our future from the margins to mainstream offers a critical shift of gender and feminism within (and beyond) the white male academy.

Hiking A Low-Cost, Accessible Intervention to Promote Health Benefits

Research has connected sedentary lifestyles with numerous negative health outcomes, including a significant increased risk for mortality. Many health care professionals seek ways to help clients meet physical activity guidelines recommended by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, the World Health Organization, and the American College of Sports Medicine in order to promote active lifestyles and improve overall wellness. Hiking is a cost-effective intervention that encourages people to be physically active while spending time in nature. Time in nature can lead to health benefits through contact with the natural elements, participation in physical activity, restoration of mental and emotional health, and time with social contacts. Benefits may be immediate, such as decreased blood pressure, decreased stress levels, enhanced immune system functioning, and restored attention, or transpire over time, such as weight loss, decreased depression, and overall wellness. Health care providers are ideally positioned to recommend and prescribe hiking to clients. Federal, state, and local natural resource agencies are beginning to partner with health care professionals to promote outdoor nature-related activities. Examples of successful doctor and other health care practitioner partnership programs are described, along with tips for getting started.

Women and Leadership: Commitments to Nurturing, More-than-Human Worlds, and Fun

Many of the leadership practices frequently employed by women have greatly influenced mainstream outdoor learning environments (OLEs) and have been adopted as common practice. In general, women’s influence in the field of adventure programming and OLEs has brought greater congruency between ethical conduct towards participants and leaders of all genders and towards the environment, as well as recognition of the importance of healthy connections and spiritual relationships. This chapter explores how practitioners can ultimately increase participants’ learning opportunities by updating practices based on locus of control, challenge by choice, stress, co-regulation, tend and befriend, comfort zone, and familiar zone, resulting in and more fun into OLEs’ programming. The author relates experiences from the 1960s and 1970s of Outward Bound and Girl Scouts.

Pathways Forward to a More Inclusive Future Whilst Honouring the Past

In this book inspiring women from around the globe share their outdoor leadership journeys. This chapter seeks to provide support and encouragement for women in outdoor learning environments (OLEs) while at the same time, being realistic about the prejudice and glass ceilings women still face. More information about lesser-known women influencing OLEs, including Marina Ewald, is highlighted. We acknowledge that women from nondominate cultures are underrepresented in the book and reference Harriet Tubman. We encourage people to find more information about women and bring it to light using a variety of media forms. There is hope, as we join in support and solidarity to change the sexism, misogyny, and general prejudice against women in order to make way for women to continue their leadership journeys.