Gender relations’ dynamic and social status in the context of an educational wilderness expedition

ABSTRACT

The outdoor domain has frequently been identified as one where women’s skills and competences were undervalued compared with those of men. The aim of the study was to explore how men and women interact in the context of an educational wilderness expedition. The concepts of field, forms of capital and habitus of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu were used to highlight the distinctive strategies deployed by women and men to be recognized as outdoor leaders and improve their status within the expedition group. We carried out a multi-component ethnographic data collection to document three main aspects of the gender interactions: 1) the gender-based division of the outdoor activities, 2) the symbolic value given by the participants to the different types of outdoor involvement, and 3) the gender-based strategies to uplift or maintain one’s own social status. Findings suggest that gender as well as social class are two intersections that played a significant role in participants’ involvement and their chance to stand out. Data also indicate that women engage in various strategies to have their outdoor skills appreciated and therefore uplift their status within the group, while men build mainly on their traditionally recognized physical capital.

KEYWORDS:

• Bourdieu
• forms of capital
• outdoor education
• social status
• ethnography
• social class

Acknowledgments

This research is based on data that will be used in the first author’s doctoral dissertation. The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their time and thoughtful insights in support of this manuscript as well as Marie-Pierre Gagné, Véronique Gosselin and Victoria Boyd for their reading and their editing suggestions. We also want to thank the students for giving generously their time to participate in the interviews, as well as the professors and students for graciously welcoming a researcher onto their expedition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In this article, like the participants, we used binary language to identify the participants’ ‘sex categories’—that is, the sex category they claim to belong to. Insofar, we adopted West and Zimmerman (1987, p. 127) definition of gender which refers as something that can be done, as ‘the activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one’s sex category.’

2. Pseudonyms are used to ensure participant confidentiality.

3. Quotations has been translated from French.

4. The results presented at this conference are based on the same corpus of data.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lorie Ouellet

Lorie Ouellet, PhD fellow, is a professor in an undergraduate outdoor leadership program whose research is about gender relations and outdoor education.

Suzanne Laberge Ph.D. is full professor at the School of kinesiology of University of Montreal. She teaches courses in sociology of sport and physique activity.