[Paddlewise] Men, Women and Paddling

A couple of years ago, I found an interesting master's thesis on women
leading paddling trips.  It was by Deborah Colman and was specifically
about canoeing, however the similarities between canoeing and kayaking,
from the perspective of leadership are probably negligible.

Colman is the sister of Caryn Colman, who runs Smoothwater Outfitters
in Temagami, Ontario (with her partner Francis and daugher Emily).  It
was at their lodge I found and read the thesis.

Colman had interviewed six women who make a living, in whole or part,
as professional canoe guides.  They were anonymous, but one was pretty
obvious to me, as I had paddled with her and knew her company and
several of her guides fairly well.*

In addition to gathering information from the interviews, Colman had scoured
the literature for other relevant information.

It makes for interesting reading.  I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but
a professional in the field might find it useful.  There were no major insights;
most of the information was as one might expect from, shall we say, stereo-
typical behavior etc.

It analyzed the differences between men and women, noting that men tend to
take charge while women tend to seek consensus.  What was interesting to
me that the women actually didn't like the term "trip leader" applied to
themselves.  They prefered something like "guide".  The objective was that
they didn't want to tell their charges what to do, but to guide them in
discovering what they could and should do.

They also discussed the difficulties that the women have in guiding men.  While
most are ok, some will not or can not take advice from women.  Sometimes a
power struggle ensues and has to be resolved.  They considered options for
resolving this IIRC.

Another topic was all-women trips.  These have become quite popular these
days and are indicative of the problem that many women have in sports when
men are around.  They don't want to deal with the dominance, flirting, macho bs
etc.

I'm sorry I can't be more specific about the paper, however, I thought a couple of
you might benefit from knowing about it.  It was long enough ago I've forgotten
many details.  I was director of tour leading in a cross country ski club at the
time  and know that there were several points I learned from the thesis that
I brought with me to establish some policies or guidelines in the club.

The thesis was submitted to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
(OISE), part of the University of Toronto.  You may be able to get it through
inter-library loans.

Mike

* One thing about this woman's company.  Most of the men who guide for her
have similar personalities.  Specifically, they are all fairly calm and
confident.  They are exceptional paddlers (WW canoe and sea kayaking)
and highly skilled and independent outdoorsman.  However, they never
come across as macho leaders.  They always discuss rather than order.
In other words, they have some of the characteristics that the women
value as guides.

PS - I'll be off on a paddling adventure (including Grand Marais next week)
so I won't be able to respond to comments (if any) till then.  See ya!

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