Critical Review of the Gendered Nature of the Urban Outdoor
Introduction
Participation and visibility of women in various spheres of club have been amongst the two chief belittling foci of feminist studies, since these provide a articulate insight in the levels of gender equality (Jónasdóttir & von der Fehr, 2005). Our paper investigates participation and visibility of women in outdoor recreation, past looking at the case of mountain areas in Sweden. The upshot of individuals' participation in outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism in general deserves attention for at least ii major reasons. Get-go, spending fourth dimension in nature is linked to better wellness and well-beingness (Bedimo-Rung, Mowen, & Cohen, 2005; Doherty, Lemieux, & Canally, 2014). Second, in the context of Anthropocene, growing urbanization and disconnectedness from nature in the everyday life, outdoor recreation helps promoting environmental awareness and, consequently, environmentally-friendly behaviour and policies (Cocks & Simpson, 2015; Kil, Holland, & Stein, 2014). Yet, if men accept ameliorate opportunities to participate in nature-based activities, it can be argued that women risk exclusion from important elements that connects to quality of life.
Outdoor recreation in backcountry areas is perhaps one of the few strongholds of gender-specified roles in Western societies. Mountains or remote national parks have been traditionally imagined and marketed as environments to be 'conquered' and 'tamed' past men (Cronon, 1996; Kinnaird & Hall, 1994). More concretely, Northern landscapes are particularly marketed as wild, rugged and untamed and, thus, oriented towards the male person tourist gaze (Gunnarsdóttir, 2011; Pritchard & Morgan, 2000b). Along with this, such tourist activities as shopping, spa, sunbathing, picnicking, spending time with family and friends, are most oft marketed towards women, perpetuating the normative discourses of beauty, motherhood and intendance in leisure (Kinnaird & Hall, 1994; Wearing, 1998). McNiel, Harris, and Fondren (2012, p. 41) state that '[g]ender socialization regarding wilderness recreation is shaped by structural constraints, such every bit cultural beliefs about women's "places" that tin lead to overt or subtle gender bias that constrains some women'due south participation in these activities'.
One way to expose and improve understand persistent gender norms in participation and representation of outdoor recreation is to look at commercial media. The attention towards representation of gender roles in marketing has been visible in academic research for a long fourth dimension (e.thou. Collins, 2011; Goffman, 1979; Klassen, Jasper, & Schwartz, 1993; Larsen, 1997; Rose, 2001). The axis of the visual in Western cultures, and the importance of analysing visual representations, in order to get a unique insight into values, norms and practices, accept been widely emphasized earlier, including the tourism context (e.g. Rakić & Chambers, 2011; Rose, 2001; Urry, 1990). It can be argued that examining media visualizations of women and men in the outdoors is crucial when attempting to sympathize and, possibly, counteract stereotyped perceptions of gender performances in outdoor recreation and tourism.
In our commodity nosotros bring together a supply and demand side perspective in the domains of outdoor recreation and tourism (in its nature-based grade) – heavily overlapping, merely not synonymous concepts. Outdoor recreation tin mostly be understood as leisure recreational activities occurring outdoors in urban and rural environments (Jenkins & Pigram, 2004). Nature-based tourism, in its turn, has been defined equally tourist activities in nature outside one's ordinary neighbourhood (Fredman, Wall Reinius, & Lundberg, 2009). The factors of travel distance, place of origin, time frame, commercialization and local tradition are often pointed out to distinguish between the two (Fredman, Stenseke, & Sandell, 2014). From the supply perspective, nonetheless, this divergence becomes irrelevant, since commercial tourist entities provide their services and market them indiscriminatorily to all visitors (Margaryan & Fredman, 2017). Furthermore, it has been noticed that outdoor recreation in Sweden is increasingly commercialized, further blurring the difference betwixt outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism (Fredman, Wall-Reinius et al., 2014). In our paper, therefore, we emphasize the concept of outdoor recreation when talking nearly the need side, i.e. information related to the behaviour of Swedish recreationists, since information technology includes both tourism activities and activities clearly outside of the tourism spectrum (e.grand. walking with a dog or jogging in the neighbourhood). Discussions about the supply side, i.due east. mountain destinations and their promotional media, all the same, are fully positioned within the tourism domain.
In our paper, we aim to contribute to the existing enquiry on gender representations in tourism media by focusing on promotional images of mountain destinations, grounded in statistical data on outdoor recreation participation in Sweden. Nosotros likewise position information technology into a larger give-and-take of people'southward changing relationships with nature. The analysis combines descriptive and inferential statistical methods with visual enquiry methods. The contribution of our paper, therefore, lies in bringing together the scholarship domains of gender and outdoor recreation with gender and media, empirically supported with the insights from the Nordic context. The central enquiry questions are:
RQ1. Are there gender differences in outdoor recreation participation in the Swedish mountain region?
RQ2. Are at that place gender differences in the representations of outdoor recreation on the websites of Sweden'south five largest mountain destinations?
RQ3. Is there a connection between gender differences in outdoor recreation participation and the gender representations of outdoor recreation activities on destinations' websites?
Sweden offers an interesting instance for this blazon of research. On the one paw, Sweden has long been known every bit a global leader in gender equality (e'er in the peak v of Global Gender Gap Index ranking together with other Nordic countries (WEF, 2016). On the other paw, when it comes to specific sectors of the economy, gender equality is oft taken for granted without strong empirical evidence, which could be the example with participation in outdoor recreation, and the reflection of gender equality in tourism marketing media. We focus on the case of the Swedish mountain region due to the traditional importance and a growing popularity of this destination type, both domestically and internationally (Fredman et al., 2014; Sandell & Sörlin, 2008). Although this report is situated within a Swedish context, the findings hold relevance from an international perspective as it contributes to full general knowledge on gender representation in tourism and outdoor recreation in Western societies.
Literature review
In our analysis nosotros apply the poststructuralist feminist approach to media and leisure, with a specific focus on outdoor recreation/nature-based tourism. More precisely, nosotros expect at the articulations of normativity within the tourist media regarding women's places and roles in the outdoors. Norms and normalization processes have been central to feminist theory and activism, striving for inclusion and equality in various societal spheres. Works of Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler were specially insightful in understanding and challenging dominant gender norms. According to Butler (1990, p. 20) one of the major tasks of feminist theory in general is to ' … deconstruct the noun appearance of gender into its constitutive acts and locate and business relationship for those acts within the compulsory frames set by the various forces that police the social appearance of gender'. Foucault's (e.grand. 1990) work helped shifting the perception of power equally a meridian-down repressive dynamic to productive power, based on endless generation and circulation of knowledge almost the world. Feminist theorists take extensively used these insights to analyse the disciplinary ability, which establishes norms of 'proficient' and 'appropriate' behaviour and categories of subjects. They have looked, for example, at the function of institutions (families, schools), art and media in producing and reinforcing certain gender norms, which are internalized by members of given societies (Spade & Willse, 2016). Amidst these are the gender norms regarding leisure and recreation, which are the focus of our newspaper.
Gender norms and outdoor recreation
Admission to recreation is not equally distributed beyond society, and socio-demographic characteristics play their role in the prevalence and extent of this access (Shores, Scott, & Floyd, 2007). Constraints to recreation are more pronounced for people who are in non-ascendant groups, and gender has long been established as an important variable (Shores et al., 2007). Application of feminist perspectives to leisure has helped understanding barriers to leisure every bit experienced past women (e.grand. Hargreaves, 1989; Henderson, 1991; Wearing, 1998). It has been argued, for example, that in patriarchal societies, women's leisure is valued less than men's and, consequently, women tend to prioritize others' leisure over their own or believe that there are not entitled to information technology (Hargreaves, 1989). Due to their caretaking role within a family, involving a bulk of unpaid domestic labour, ofttimes in add-on to formal employment, women tend to face up stronger leisure constraints related to time, finances and social acceptance (Wearing, 1998).
In addition to the full general bug of access to recreation, women face a plethora of other barriers when it comes to types of 'approved' leisure, and specifically outdoor recreation. Here, the positioning of women in relation to nature/outdoors has been especially problematic and paradoxical, not but with patriarchal, only also feminist ontologies. Within the standard (and in itself problematic) nature/civilisation ontological split, women accept been associated with the natural (i.e. archaic, uncontrolled, undisciplined), as opposed to cultural/male realm (Moore, 2011; Ortner, 1972). Within this logic, however, women are to be confined to the indoor domain, while men perform the role of 'tamers' of nature, both indoors and outdoors. This has resulted in a reactionary feminist trajectory of distancing women from this narrative, known as 'the feminist flight from nature' (Alaimo, 2016). Thus, the ecofeminism approach, on the other manus, aimed to capitalize on aligning women and nature, pointing out at the linkage between women's oppression and ecology problems, and looking for new ways to re-inhabit natural spaces (Alaimo, 2016). Overall, up until the last few decades, women's involvement with the outdoors remained complex in theory and largely invisible in exercise (Henderson, 1996).
Studies on women'southward participation in the outdoors, for example in the American context, show that women express higher business concern about their skill levels, body image, fearfulness of harassment, fear of embarrassment and not fitting in (Henderson, 1996; Henderson & King, 1998; Shores et al., 2007). The latter is particularly important when the social context deems certain activities as more than appropriate for men than for women (Warren & Loeffler, 2006)). Those women who do succeed as outdoor professionals are often perceived as 'superwomen', thus, suggesting that being a adult female in the outdoors, specially in a leadership position, is something outside the norm (Haluza-DeLay & Dyment, 2003; Henderson, 1996). Despite women'due south participation in the outdoor leisure and adventure environment is increasing in the Western societies, they are still a minority in what is seen as a male domain (Boniface, 2006; McNiel et al., 2012).
Gender norms and tourism media
Tourism marketing media has had a long-standing reputation of lagging behind when information technology comes to visualizing gender equality (Alessio & Johannsdóttir, 2011; Gunnarsdóttir, 2011; Jenkins, 2003; Khan, 2009; Pritchard & Morgan, 2000a; Rakić & Chambers, 2011; Sirakaya & Sonmez, 2000). Although substantial progress has been made in the Western tourism media domain, at that place are indications that certain gender stereotypes still persist and, thus, demand further exposure (McNiel et al., 2012; Zink & Kane, 2015). Contributions from tourism scholarship exposed gendered representations in various recreational settings (e.g. Jenkins, 2003; Khan, 2009; Pritchard & Morgan, 2000a; Rakić & Chambers, 2011; Sirakaya & Sonmez, 2000). Co-ordinate to Khan (2009), tourist destinations have typically been marketed as appealing to either females or males, and tourism advertisements often reinforce heteronormative patriarchal discourses, where 'men act and women appear' (Berger, 1972, p. 47). In this regard, diverse aspects of recreation become masculinized or feminized due to the means in which tourism is marketed.
Many factors can contribute to gender socialization, but different types of media are ever then influential due to their power to generate and solidify gender role norms (Larsen, 1997). In today's epitome-conscious globe, images are of great importance when information technology comes to the way reality is perceived and understood (Zink & Kane, 2015). Despite a pregnant progress, there is evidence that in advertising media, women are still underrepresented and/or tend to exist portrayed in conventional roles (Collins, 2011).
Images take always been a highly important part of tourism, be those brochures, postcards or photographs shared through social media (Gunnarsdóttir, 2011). The way in which gender is articulated as a part of the social 'reality' has meaning implications for the full general evolution, staging and marketing of tourism. Therefore, tourism processes are gendered in their construction, presentation and consumption (Kinnaird & Hall, 1996). More concretely, tourism processes are constructed out of a gendered guild, and, consequently, major aspects of tourism-related development and activities embody gender relations.
According to Khan (2009), tourism marketing in the Western globe has traditionally been male-oriented and, indeed, the dominance of masculine ethics is still visible. For case, women are typically shown not every bit travellers, but rather as bonny and welcoming hostesses (Khan, 2009). Moreover, research on gender depiction in tourism emphasizes that women tend to be portrayed in decorative roles (Jenkins, 2003; Khan, 2009; Kinnaird & Hall, 1994). Pictures of attractive women are especially vivid in promotional media of exotic destinations, where sexualized bodies are routinely used to illustrate the desirability of a place (Jenkins, 2003; Kinnaird & Hall, 1994).
Every bit women's role and status in both family and society take evolved dramatically in the Western countries in the last century, women have become a substantial role of the labour strength and, consequently, leisure consumption also. Although it could be expected that tourism advertisements, targeting a generation of well-educated and independent working women, would actively depart from sometime gender tropes, this has hardly been the case (Jenkins, 2003; Margaryan & Zherdev, 2011; Sirakaya & Sonmez, 2000).
Media enquiry on nature-based tourism and outdoor recreation advertising has constitute that these ofttimes focus on individualism and are primarily grounded in the credo of white male person potency (Cronon, 1996; Hirschman, 2003; Kinnaird & Hall, 1996; McNiel et al., 2012). Being out in the 'wild' still means overcoming challenges, such every bit fear, exposure and hurting, becoming self-sufficient, testing oneself confronting nature'south elements, and the solo performance is seen as an ideal (Cronon, 1996; Hirschman, 2003; Saayman & Viljoen, 2016). Advertisements of women's place in the outdoors, on the other hand, are less straightforward and more circuitous. For case, in a visual assay of outdoor recreation magazines in New Zealand, Zink and Kane (2015) found that women are significantly underrepresented in these images. Similarly, McNiel et al. (2012) found that women'southward participation in outdoor activities is shown as short in duration and lacking physical functioning, whereas men's participation is portrayed as a source of claiming, enervating strength and endurance. Women in the outdoors tend to be visualized in limited roles, ofttimes together with men, who are represented as necessary companions to assist, brainwash, or protect women (McNiel et al., 2012). This is arguably somewhat of a paradox, given that women throughout history take been associated with the natural. Even so, the representation of women as in need of assistance in the outdoors corresponds to ideas of women beingness distanced from nature by the restriction of their roles to domestic domains, every bit argued by Alaimo (2016). Information technology can exist assumed that in this type of recreation and run a risk environs, the overall theme in outdoor media representations is that women are outsiders, whereas men are in their rightful element.
Study area
Sweden and other Nordic countries are known for loftier levels of gender equality, expressed, primarily, in unusually large number of women in all levels of balloter politics, employment, and teaching (Jónasdóttir & von der Fehr, 2005). Regularly topping the globe Gender Gap Index (WEF, 2016), however, does non mean that gender equality is uniformly and proportionally distributed among all sectors and hierarchical levels. For instance, as in the rest of the world, the economic, bureaucratic and scientific-technological ability elites remain dominated by men (Jónasdóttir & von der Fehr, 2005). Thrane (2000) found that women in Sweden, Kingdom of norway and Kingdom of denmark likewise have less leisure time than men, which is especially exacerbated by marriage and the presence of small children, in line with the women'due south 'double burden' theory (Väänänen et al., 2005). This makes the Swedish case report unique only besides typical enough to provide useful insights for other contexts.
Sweden has a long tradition of outdoor recreation (locally known every bit friluftsliv or 'open-air life'), which prioritizes simple, good for you and sustainable activities in nature, attainable to everyone (Sandell & Sörlin, 2008). Activities, such as hiking, Nordic walking, fishing, mushroom and drupe-picking in the forest, and cross-country skiing, remain highly popular among the full general population (Emmelin, Fredman, Sandell, & Lisberg Jensen, 2010; Fredman, Stenseke, et al., 2014). About one-half of the Swedish population has visited the mountain region at least in one case in a 5-year catamenia (Fredman et al., 2014), and 85% of these visits are related to leisure and recreation (Heberlein, Fredman, & Vuorio, 2002).
The Swedish mountain region, stretching for over g kilometres along the Norwegian edge, constitutes one 3rd of the country, simply accommodates but 2 percent of the total population. The mountain region also shows the highest proportion of specially protected nature areas in the land (SCB, 2017). Locally known every bit fjällen (fells), this area, with a rather flat topography above the line of the tree growth, is especially suitable for hiking and skiing. At least half of those who plan a visit to the Swedish mountain region seek information on websites (Fredman et al., 2014). Websites and electronic portals, therefore, provide an important gateway to the region and innovate potential tourists to the outdoor recreation activities available in the mountains. The images displayed on websites are, therefore, both an important indicator of and a contributor to how different outdoor activities are perceived.
The Nordic outdoors has historically been positioned in the tourism media as a masculine space, inviting exploration, independence, physical claiming and hazard (Gunnarsdóttir, 2011; Heldt Cassel & Pashkevich, 2018). Commemoration of Nordic landscapes and the themes of masculine accomplishment are deeply rooted in the Romantic ideals and the celebrity of Arctic explorations of the nineteenth century, where female narratives were invisible (Ísleifsson, 2011; Wall-Reinius, 2009). Nordic landscapes take been imagined and represented every bit places to exam one's limits, to be confronted with nature'due south forces. In her detailed analysis of the earliest forms of tourism in the Scandinavian wilderness, known as Scandinavian Sporting Tour, Sillanpää (2002) demonstrates how the local tourist place-myths and images were created in response to the desires of male tourists. Previous research on tourist images in the Nordic countries allows suggesting that gender equality is not necessarily axiomatic in the tourism marketing even in the Nordic context (Alessio & Johannsdóttir, 2011; Chekalina, Fuchs, & Lexhagen, 2018; Gunnarsdóttir, 2011; Margaryan & Zherdev, 2011).
Methods
We prefer a mixed-methods inquiry pattern, combining quantitative (descriptive and inferential statistics) and qualitative (visual data assay) methods. The aim of the quantitative information analysis is to detect out if there are gender differences in the modes of participation in outdoor recreation among the Swedish population. The qualitative assay of images in tourism websites aims at agreement how outdoor recreation is represented in major promotional media from a gender perspective. Finally, results of both data sources are brought together and discussed in a wider theoretical context.
Data collection
The quantitative data stem from a comprehensive national web-based survey conducted in 2013 among the Swedish population between 15–lxx years of age. The report includes questions virtually visits to the mount region, and different types of recreation activeness participation in the region. The survey was conducted during the months of January, May and September. At every occasion, 1,000 randomly selected individuals participated in the surveys, i.e. a full of 3,000 survey participants. Of those 3,000 participants, a full of 305 respondents had visited the mountains and participated in various outdoor recreation activities during the previous year. General results of this survey (without the focus of gender stereotypes) accept been published in Fredman et al. (2014).
For the collection of qualitative data, the websites of 5 large mountain destinations in Sweden were analysed: Funäsfjällen, Idre Fjäll, Sälen, Vemdalen and Åre. These destinations were selected because they are the most popular mountain destinations in Sweden showing a high number of visitors in both the summer and wintertime season (Visit Fjällen, 2016). The websites were searched for images of the marketed outdoor recreation activities, which resulted in a sample of 316 pictures. The search was conducted from March to April 2015. From this sample, the following images were excluded: images with no people in sight, images of children and images where it was difficult to approximate whether a person is female or male person (e.thousand. when a helmet covered the faces or when the flick was taken from great distance). Similarly, images of very large groups were eliminated from the assay. Although images portraying outdoor activities included in the quantitative survey data were the primary focus, a few pictures portraying other activities were sampled every bit well in order to further explore special topics of stereotyped gender depiction. The final distribution of the image sample from the selected Swedish mountain destinations is shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Picture sample.
Data analysis
The question from the national survey called for the explorative analysis was: 'How many days have yous participated in the post-obit outdoor recreation activities in the Swedish mountain region?' The respondents in the survey were given a list of 40 common outdoor activities in Sweden and were asked if they had participated in these activities with the following frequencies: not at all; up to 1 day; 1–2 days; iii–vii days; more than than 7 days. As the survey also included activities that are not very common, such equally geocaching, caving or snow kiting, the sub-samples of some categories were very modest. Due to the violation of the assumptions of minimum expected frequencies they had to be dichotomized into 'yes/no' variables. A Pearson's chi-foursquare examination was conducted on forty variables in society to detect the human relationship betwixt activity participation duration and the participants' gender.
The website photographs were analysed based on the principles of content analysis (Rakić & Chambers, 2011; Rose, 2001), inspired past Goffman's (1979) classic study of gender role portrayals in advertisements. Based on Goffman'southward approach, each picture was coded accordingly as: (1) the action being engaged in, and the gender of the person engaging in it; (2) if a woman was present in the picture, her relative size and placement; (3) the setting of the picture; (four) if a woman was present in the moving-picture show, whether her portrayal is active or passive; and (v) gender depiction in the family context. These five categories were used every bit a starting signal to place themes and recurrent patterns on tourism websites.
Results
The quantitative analysis clearly shows that there are significant gender differences in certain outdoor recreation activities in the Swedish mount region. More precisely, a statistically meaning association betwixt gender and type of outdoor activeness were found in 12 out of the 40 activities (Table 2). In all but one (picnic/barbecuing), more men participated in the respective action than women 1 . Interestingly plenty, almost all of the outdoor activities found to have pregnant gender differences tin be considered as traditionally male, i.due east. fishing, hunting, rock climbing or mountain biking.
Tabular array two. Gender differences in outdoor recreation participation.
Information technology is important to note that in the majority of the outdoor activities (i.e. 28 of 40) no significant deviation in participants' gender was found. For some classical Swedish outdoor recreation activities, such as downhill skiing, hiking or camping, this effect was somewhat expected. However, a surprising finding was that the activities that are described in the literature every bit typically masculine or feminine, such equally skateboarding, horseback riding or meditating/yoga (Bäckström, 2013; Birdee et al., 2008), gender differences were not found. The reason why the majority of the analysed outdoor activities do not show gender differences could too exist determined past the fact that these activities are often engaged by all family unit members together. Similarly, a rather unexpected finding is that motor sports activities did not testify significant gender differences. For example, snowmobiling, motor canoeing, flying motor- or sailplane, are ofttimes perceived as a typical masculine activity (Mehus, Germeten, & Henriksen, 2011). Interestingly, no gender differences were found for this activeness in the context of Swedish mountain tourism participation. Still, this might be partially explained by the way the question was formulated, not allowing to differentiate between drivers and passengers (see Henderson, 1996).
Gender and outdoor recreation activities
Moving on to the content assay, it suggests the post-obit findings. The 128 selected pictures independent representations of 108 women (45%) and 136 (56%) men. Hence, more men than women were shown participating in outdoor recreation activities. Moreover, in many of the activities portrayed, gender differences in terms of frequency could be noticed. For case, within the activity of mountain biking/cycling, more than twice every bit many men as women were pictured. In contrast, men were non present at all engaging in spa and shopping. Interestingly plenty, cross-state skiing was portrayed as a typical female person action, showing seven women and just one man. In the more activeness-filled and adventurous outdoor activity of rafting, there were almost twice as many male person participants as in that location were females. Similarly, fishing was shown as an activity dominated by men; only four women were pictured when engaging in this action compared to xi men. A similar finding was obtained for trail running: eight individuals were displayed trail running, of which vi were men an only two were women. The activities with rather equal gender distribution are the archetype mountain activities: hiking and downhill skiing (Table iii).
Table iii. Gender and activity.
Women'south relative size and placement
In full general, there were not that many pictures portraying a woman as smaller than a man, or placed behind him, as found in previous studies (Chhabra, Andereck, Yamanoi, & Plunkett, 2011; Lindner, 2004). All the same, it was immediately articulate that more images pictured women as smaller and placed behind a human than the opposite (15 pictures displayed women equally smaller and more often placed backside a man, and five pictures displayed men equally smaller and placed behind a adult female). Figure 1 shows a group of women rafting, only it appears to be the male guide who does all the work in steering the boat.
(In) equality in the outdoors: gender perspective on recreation and tourism media in the Swedish mountains
Published online:
05 July 2018
![]({"type":"image","src":"/na101/home/literatum/publisher/tandf/journals/content/rcit20/2020/rcit20.v023.i02/13683500.2018.1495698/20191128/images/medium/rcit_a_1495698_f0001_oc.jpg"})
The setting of the motion-picture show
It was more mutual for women to exist shown in calm environments than it was for men. More than precisely, 61% of the women in the pictures were shown in at-home environments, comparing to men. Out of the pictures presenting men in a at-home environment, 45% of the portrayed men were engaging in fishing, or spending time with the family. The calm environments with women were presenting such mutual activities equally hiking with a male partner or a family, spa or shopping, cross-country skiing, canoeing, and horseback riding.
In pictures portraying people in action-filled or challenging environments, men (65%) were again more than frequently present. Most activeness-related pictures portrayed men while mountain biking or rafting. The case of mountain biking is an interesting example, conspicuously showing a gender-bias: out of 17 photos of people engaging in mountain biking, but three depicted women without a male partner.
Out of the pictures taken in an action/challenging outdoor environment, women were nearly normally pictured downhill skiing. Out of 19 pictures portraying downhill skiing, eight of those pictured a woman skiing (on her own or in a grouping). The rest pictured women and men skiing together, or men alone. Out of 5 pictures portraying canoeing/kayaking, women were simply depicted canoeing, comparison to the more activeness-filled kayaking. Figure 2 displays two women and a child calmly paddling along the quiet river.
(In) equality in the outdoors: gender perspective on recreation and tourism media in the Swedish mountains
Published online:
05 July 2018
![]({"type":"image","src":"/na101/home/literatum/publisher/tandf/journals/content/rcit20/2020/rcit20.v023.i02/13683500.2018.1495698/20191128/images/medium/rcit_a_1495698_f0002_oc.jpg"})
Are women portrayed as agile or passive?
Birthday, people shown in website images were clearly more oft portrayed as agile participants than equally passive enjoyers. However, at that place was a singled-out difference between how women and men were portrayed. Of the women portrayed by website images, 20% were depicted as passive, whereas only 4% of the men were portrayed as passive. More than concretely, women were more than ofttimes pictured when receiving a spa treatment or admiring the scenic view, every bit shown, for instance, in Figure 3. In the few pictures where a human being was portrayed as passive, he was typically pictured together with a woman.
(In) equality in the outdoors: gender perspective on recreation and tourism media in the Swedish mountains
Published online:
05 July 2018
![]({"type":"image","src":"/na101/home/literatum/publisher/tandf/journals/content/rcit20/2020/rcit20.v023.i02/13683500.2018.1495698/20191128/images/medium/rcit_a_1495698_f0003_oc.jpg"})
Gender depiction in the family
Of the 128 pictures, only 16 images portrayed families or adults with children. Therefore, it is hard to reliably draw conclusions regarding representation of gender roles within a family unit. Parents and children in all images were actively engaged in an activeness, so women and men were equally participating. Too, the types of activities engaged in were fairly equally distributed between women and men. For example, Effigy 4 shows a mother mountain biking with her son. However, fathers were not pictured engaging in typical masculine activities with their sons, and mothers were not portrayed participating in typical feminine activities with their daughters. Near half of the pictures portrayed a nuclear family, whereas the other half of the pictures portrayed a single parent (which could exist explained by comparatively high divorce rates in the state).
(In) equality in the outdoors: gender perspective on recreation and tourism media in the Swedish mountains
Published online:
05 July 2018
![]({"type":"image","src":"/na101/home/literatum/publisher/tandf/journals/content/rcit20/2020/rcit20.v023.i02/13683500.2018.1495698/20191128/images/medium/rcit_a_1495698_f0004_oc.jpg"})
Give-and-take
Our findings put frontward that despite overall high levels of gender equality in Sweden, there is a certain difference in the modes of participation and visualization of outdoor recreation. Thus, based on the assay of both quantitative and qualitative data we advise the following discussion points.
Persistence of gender norms in outdoor recreation participation and visualization
According to the quantitative analysis, there are significant gender differences in outdoor recreation when information technology comes to specific activities. Men either as participate in all activities women do, or dominate the residual, while the same could not be said almost women. This indicates that women engage in a narrower range of outdoor activities. In turn, findings of the subsequent qualitative analysis of website pictures from the five largest Swedish mount tourism destinations testify that traditional gender norms were likewise nowadays in website images.
What is interesting is that new trends in outdoor recreation do not seem to be going in the management of higher equality, merely rather the opposite. Already a few years ago, it was noticed that in that location is an axiomatic shift in outdoor recreation trends, characterized by increasing commercialization, importance of experiences, achievement, equipment and skills, adventure rather than social interaction, and overall more male-orientedness (e.1000. Fredman & Heberlein, 2003; Fredman, Gössling, & Hultman, 2006; Odden, 2008; van Bottenburg & Salome, 2010). This, we discover on the instance of mount biking, one of the 'hottest' new activities in the off-season ski resorts, attracting pregnant investment and being actively marketed (Hagen & Boyes, 2016; Pickering & Leung, 2016). This activeness was featured on all websites as challenging and activeness-filled. The fact that the majority of mountain bikers are men, both in terms of participation rates and visibility, indicate to that it is normalized equally a male action (Huybers-Withers & Livingston, 2010; Pritchard & Morgan, 2000b; Wagner, 2008). On the other paw, in line with the increasing commercialization trends, ski resorts aim to position themselves not merely equally places of concrete activity, but likewise as places of comfort, relaxation and hedonic consumption. Spa and shopping were presented extensively on the websites, featuring exclusively women, and, thus, normalizing these activities as female-oriented (see Khan, 2009; Kinnaird & Hall, 1994; Wearing, 1998). In other words, we have non observed any new trends in the visual representation that would explicitly challenge the traditional heteronormativity.
Another interesting finding was that some popular outdoor activities were presented as most suitable for a specific gender, whereas no statistically significant differences were found in participation rates (eastward.g. cantankerous-country skiing). In addition, many of the popular activities in the survey were not pictured at all in the websites (e.g. snowboarding). The discrepancy between the images and the 'real life' has been noticed by tourism researchers before, who argued that tourism media tends to be more lagging behind the actual societal trends (Alessio & Johannsdóttir, 2011; Gunnarsdóttir, 2011; Jenkins, 2003; Khan, 2009; Pritchard & Morgan, 2000a; Rakić & Chambers, 2011; Sirakaya & Sonmez, 2000).
To sum upwards, the findings gained in this written report conspicuously support the idea that tourism marketing media tends to reinforce gender expectations in the context of outdoor recreation (Collins, 2011; Johansson, Röjlar, Eriksson, & Frisk, 2008; Pritchard & Morgan, 2000a). Gender function socialization gives men better tools to participate and feel more comfy in outdoor recreation. In dissimilarity, women fit into fewer role models in outdoor recreation, and, therefore, are more than likely to feel limited and avert participation.
Problematization of gender norms in the outdoors
Nosotros problematize persistence of gender norms in the outdoors on the following levels. Beginning, the observed tropes that perpetuate women's office equally passive participants, undermining women's aspirations for leadership positions in the outdoor context and beyond. Placement of women behind men in the photographic composition, observed in our sample, has been described as one of the most frequent categorization of gender display (Goffman, 1979). Although the majority of individuals displayed in the websites are portrayed as actively engaging in an outdoor action, more women than men were depicted as passive. Men, on the other hand, were in nigh all pictures actively committed to an outdoor action. Displaying the demand for women to be protected by men in the outdoors, as plant in the analysed website pictures, can, thus, be interpreted as a stereotypical sit-in of men's superiority over women (Goffman, 1979; Haluza-DeLay & Dyment, 2003; McNiel et al., 2012; Sirakaya & Sonmez, 2000; Warren & Loeffler, 2006). In the context of Sweden, it can exist argued that the outdoors remains 1 of the few spaces where this norm is still visible rather explicitly.
Furthermore, the depicted heteronormative gender roles place exaggerated expectations on men every bit adrenaline-seeking adventurers and conquerors of the outdoors. The spirit of rugged individualism can exist found in all pictures of male visitors taken in challenging environments. This, over again, is in line with the platonic of interim 'out in the backcountry', where individualism and tackling nature'southward challenges is the main goal for men, but not for women (Cronon, 1996; Hirschman, 2003; Kinnaird & Hall, 1994; Pritchard & Morgan, 2000a). Every bit could be expected, the analysis of website pictures revealed a majority of female visitors enjoying the calm and still environs. This suggests that women are supposed to prefer a relaxed, calm temper, and if engaging in a challenging activity, they tend to be with a male person partner. This implies that if women themselves are allowed to cull outdoor activities to participate in, they would choose calmer activities. Withal, when together with a human being, they might choose more challenging activities, every bit they would experience more than safe and would also have a chance to assert themselves in order to exist perceived as equally competent as men (Henderson, 2000).
Perpetuation of traditional gender norms of behaviour in the outdoors has far reaching consequences not only in the context of gender socialization but also people'south relationships with nature. On the i hand, limiting women'south participation outdoors or positioning it equally something 'not for women' might have its effects on the interest of women in natural sciences, environmental policies and nature-related conclusion making. On the other mitt, proliferation of adrenaline-, skills- and adventure-rich male-oriented activities not but de-normalizes other ways of engagement with nature for men, but also reduces nature to a background setting, thus, discouraging deeper, more mindful and meditative human being-nature relationships.
Conclusion
Our study put forward that traditional heteronormative stereotypes pertaining to the images of masculinity and femininity can exist found in the context of participation and visualization of outdoor recreation in Sweden. This suggests that even if Sweden is one of the near gender-equal societies, it is non exempt from traditional gender norms of behaviour and representation, admitting to a lesser extent than in more patriarchal societies. In fact, we claim that the context of Nordic backcountry context makes these norms more than pronounced, highly-seasoned to the male-dominated Romantic ethics of nature conquest and take a chance (Alessio & Johannsdóttir, 2011; Gunnarsdóttir, 2011; Heldt Cassel & Pashkevich, 2018; Ísleifsson, 2011; Sillanpää, 2002). Nosotros also argue that the new trends in outdoor recreation may, in fact, further perpetuate this vision, due to growing popularity of outdoor activities, stressing physical challenge, adventure, skill and achievement, oriented primarily towards male recreationists, observed in our data and previous literature (Fredman & Heberlein, 2003; Fredman et al., 2006; Odden, 2008; van Bottenburg & Salome, 2010). Female-oriented activities, in turn, predominantly either represent traditional gender roles or encourage new forms of hedonistic consumption in controlled, quasi-outdoor settings.
A highly promising area for future inquiry is to focus on the demand side, thereby exploring user-generated images on photo-sharing and social media platforms, such as Flickr or Instagram (Hudson & Thal, 2013; Munar & Steen Jacobsen, 2014). Likewise, in the context of Anthropocene and uncurbed negative impacts of humans on the ecological environment, it is necessary to critically re-think the office of tourism and recreation in the natural context. Participation in outdoor- and nature-based activities can contribute to a higher degree of environmental awareness and increased connectedness with nature amid practitioners. Thus, (re)discovering new and erstwhile modes of meaningful engagement with nature, expanding the range of gender-conscious outdoor activities, moving into directions other than challenge- and action-seeking, is suggested equally a fruitful farther research trajectory.
Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13683500.2018.1495698
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