Women and Outdoor Adventure

Posted by Meegan Scanlon on November 2, 2010 · 2 Comments 

Photo courtesy of Sarah Scanlon

A group of friends arrive at their first nights camping spot. Pulling their canoes up on shore they eagerly begin unloading the gear. Sweaty and tired from their days efforts morale is high and the site is quickly put together.

It’s a yearly tradition for the group to be out on the land and to revel in their adventure.

But this is not a typical boys weekend away. In fact, there are no males to be found on this trip.

It might look the same, but a women’s only experience is as individual as you can get.

According to Amanda Creighton, of Northern Edge Algonquin, these groups create adventures unique to females.

“Women’s only retreats are specific to women’s dynamics and how women bond,” she said. “It creates a safe container for people to build trust.”

Jennifer Brammer, director of Wild Women Expeditions, recently surveyed members and the concept of safe space is something that has sets these programs apart.

“For some women, they come from an experience where they might be recently divorced or they might have a female partner and they want a very positive space for them to go out on a trip,” she said. “So I hear a lot about that, about safe space.”

These groups also allow women to break free from societies prescribed gender roles and to challenge themselves to try something new.

“It’s a different vibe being in a group of women,” said Brammer. “Especially trying to do new things and take on different roles on a trip then I would when I go out on trip with my brother or a mixed kind of group.”

Photo courtesy of Aisling O'Carrol

For Judy Goss, director of sports performance for The Canadian Sport Psychology Association, these groups provide a unique opportunity for women to feel equal.

“(Women) potentially don’t want to go with the men because they felt they might be left back, so to speak, or couldn’t keep up” Goss said. “Where as you go with a bunch of women and they are probably pretty confident they could stay with the group.”

For Goss it can be as simple as how they talk to each other.

“Just the way women communicate and men communicate is different,” Goss said. “I think we all know that.”

She says women are more likely to talk about how they feel and to incorporate the feelings of others into their decisions. Whether or not to continue onto the next site or to stay and set-up for the night are situations that women would discuss as a group. “Whereas the men might say lets do it this way and who cares what you think kind of concept,” Goss said.

However, these groups do not exist because women have less of a risk taking behaviour than men.

“In psychology there are certain personality characteristics we would define as risk takers,” Goss said. “So, women can be risk takers just as much as men can be risk takers.”

According to Goss it may be more about opportunity than drive.

“Going out and doing the adventure kind of stuff might be a little bit different because guys maybe have always been down that route,” she said. “Whereas for women it is just becoming more accessible or available to them.”

“So, those kind of risk taking women would be out there doing that same kind of things.”

Creating these opportunities is what companies like Northern Edge Algonquin or Wild Women Adventures are all about.

Creighton has seen women’s only trips growing in popularity over the past few years.

“One of our programs, the Northern Spirit Yoga Canoe Adventure, it was sold out this year and we were actually needing to put another program on the map,” she said.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Scanlon

Sometimes these trips can be appealing for a much simpler reason. For Brammer, her first trip with Wild Women Adventure was as much about a women’s only group as it was about someone else helping with the details.

“It started to get to the point where it got really difficult to organize a trip with friends,” she said. “To find the time when we all had vacation and where were we going to go and organizing the gear.”

It was what she discovered beyond the conveniences that kept Brammer coming back each year and eventually to buy the company.

“You didn’t have something to prove,” she said. “It was really a fun spirited inclusive (environment), and also having more of a feminist orientation to the company really appealed to me.”

“I thought I would meet women who shared a lot of my values as well.”

Filed under Feature stories, Life · Tagged with adventure, algonquin, outdoor, trips, women