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A few good women

How a lack of women at senior levels of ski instructing impacts the sport

"There’s no women at the top. Let’s be honest."

Caroline L’Heureux states it baldly. The farther up the ranks of the ski industry you go, the fewer women there are.

Her colleague, Natalie Morel, puts it just as plainly. "It’s a man’s world," she says.

Both women are emerging leaders in the industry, or at least they would be, if they were men. Both have at least 10 years instructing experience, have been part of the Whistler-Blackcomb Women’s Ambassador team. Morel, a supervisor in the adult ski school, and women’s gear representative for Head Canada, has a shot at being part of the 2007 Interski team. L’Heureux is part-way through attaining her Level 4 and works as the right-hand woman for the Adult Ski School’s general manager. University educated, bilingual, athletic, personable: in any other field, these women would be natural leaders. But this is skiing – the last bastion of the boys club. "You’re out there with mostly men," says Morel. "The subjects of conversation are pretty chauvinistic. You have to be a pretty strong woman to make it through. You really have to work hard." The bottom line is, skiing is an elite sport that is still dominated by white men.

The elitism has been recognized as one reason the sport is in decline. Snowboarding’s explosive growth owes something to the reaction against that. The pundits recommend finding new markets – target gays, minorities, teenagers, in order to maintain some growth. The Canada Ski Council hosted a State of the Industry Workshop in Toronto in July, and projected that our current annual "19.1 million skier/rider visits will drop to 15.5 million by 2018/2019 if interventions are not taken to retain the Baby Boomers and focus on the strong ethnic mix of Generation Y (13-19 year olds)."

And now, with Whistler-Blackcomb presenting Women’s Week this week, another special interest group is being singled out.

"It’s kind of like Altitude," says VP of Business Development, Rob McSkimming, of the Women’s Week, implicitly acknowledging how marginalized the fairer sex is in the ski world. McSkimming says the women-centred focus was inspired by the vibe in Whistler after the Fairmont Chateau’s Mallard Lounge hosted a screening party of The Bachelor in the fall. He noticed the female staff in his office were totally amped up the next day after an injection of girls’ solidarity and socializing, and took note.

Too often, girls in Whistler, particularly those involved with the ski school, find themselves one of a handful of females amongst large circles of lads – the garnish on the platter of a giant sausage-fest. The numbers confirm the impression: in Base pod, the mountain’s Learn to Ski program, there are only 10 women in a staff of 80. Morel, who co-supervises the pod says, "There are very few women compared to men as instructors. Every time we get a female resume, we’re like, yeah, we’ll take her, we’ll take that person right away." In the offices of the Adult Ski School, Morel is one of only two women who work as supervisors or managers, holding up half the sky alongside her 17 Y-chromosomed counterparts. An early season training update for the most senior instructors in the Alliance saw only two women amongst 60 Level 4 instructors. A mere three women have been recognized out of the 31 inductees to the Canadian Ski Instructors Alliance Hall of Fame.

With the exception of the Children’s Ski School, where the emphasis on animation, love of children, and skill with people has resulted in a female-dominated workplace, in the wider ski teaching industry, women are a tiny minority.

This alone could remain an idle chairlift observation if it weren’t for the fact that this under-representation of women is reflected on the hill amongst visitors. Canada Ski Council statistics collated in 2003 show that only 40 per cent of skiers and 30 per cent of snowboarders are female. The State of the Industry Workshop reported that: "Females are a minority on the hill, especially as they get older." The fact is, on the hill, the girls are seriously outnumbered. We need to take note of this, because marketers have long recognized that women as consumers are the key decision makers.

Communications specialist, Irene Link, who has presented seminars on selling to the opposite sex for the Outdoor Industry Women’s Coalition, says, "Women are major buyers and heavily influence men and other women to buy."

Deputy editor of Ski Magazine, Joe Cutts told the New York Times in December 2004, "It is often women who make the decision about whether a family goes skiing. It is important to market to women, and companies better wake up to that."

Ski manufacturers are clueing in, and increasingly developing women-specific product lines. But female customers are not just looking for a lighter ski and more comfortable boots that colour-coordinate with their outfit. Nor will a yoga session and a wine and cheese party feminize their experience of skiing or riding.

And feminizing the experience is what is needed if we are to retain the loyalty and affection of our customers, and convert beginners into core skiers and riders.

Favio Otis runs the Whistler Nordic Centre and sees a bulk of his business coming from female skiers. Cross-country skiing is the one snowsport in which female participation outnumbers the lads. "We say it’s a soft activity," he explains. "It’s a softer, gentler, more nature-oriented experience, and lots of women are coming cross-country skiing while their husbands are out downhilling." Cross-country skiing is also picking up the babyboomer converts from downhilling for whom safety is a big issue – the perception that the hills are too crowded is one often shared by women recreational skiers, who are distracted by the skiers and snowboarders around them.

Kirsty Allan has been bringing her family to Whistler from Great Britain annually for more than five years. She and her husband are now both keen skiers, but Kirsty had to persevere to awaken the passion, and saw pretty early on that she and her husband were on different planets when it came to skiing. She says, "I think that there is a difference between men and women in the way they approach skiing. I think that men are happy to ‘get down’ whereas most women want to get down in control and with plenty of style marks. I think men tend to measure achievement by how fast they can go or how steep they can ski, whereas women measure it by how technically correct they are and how comfortable and in control they feel skiing down difficult terrain. If men can get to the bottom without falling, even without any kind of control, then they skied it, while I would just claim I ‘got down’."

Allan recounts the story of a female friend who has vetoed family ski holidays because of one negative experience. A male ski instructor took her to the top of the mountain and "skied" her down. He pronounced it a success because she got to the bottom. She felt out of control, fell numerous times, and hung up her boards for good.

Would the story have had a happier ending if she had skied with a female instructor? Obviously, the gender of your pro isn’t insurance against challenging experiences, but there’s a broad consensus amongst female ski school participants that female instructors are less intimidating, can stretch your comfort zone without snapping it, and are more empathetic.

Says Allen: "I think that female instructors tend to pick up on body language and non-verbal communications better and know when to push and when to back off more. They’re more supportive and encouraging and tend to know how to deal with an outburst of tears better then the guys."

Female skiers often have a heightened perception of risk, which coats their skiing experience with a thin veneer of terror. The men who ski with them, from their instructor, to their husband or boyfriend, often belittle them for their nerves, infrequently sharing that level of apprehension. When I share my theory with female clients, that becoming a mother changes the way you look at the world because you are constantly scanning for dangers to your child, and you forget how to turn those spidey-senses off, they are full of gratitude and relief. "You understand!"

Natalie Morel regularly sees women learning to ski because their husband or boyfriend has insisted that they share his passion. "They’re not here because they really wanted to come on a ski vacation. It was because the guy loves it and said, ‘if you want to be with me, you better learn how to ski.’ So, the approach with teaching women to ski has to be a little different. We need instructors that are very patient, won’t push them because they’re already getting pushed by the boyfriend, and can read their body language to know when it’s enough, when they’ve been pushed far enough."

The State of the Industry Workshop studied the trends in B.C. and identified a major goal for the west was to convert its beginners into skiers. And we’re sadly failing. We’re failing the women even more. Maybe, part of the solution could be as simple as stacking the Learn to Ski school with women instructors.

Allan agrees that one way to target women is to have more women instructors, and to educate male instructors in the way women think and respond.

Morel, as a supervisor and trainer, sees a tendency for inexperienced female instructors to gravitate towards female trainers, if they’re available. "They think it will be less judgmental, not so much pressure. Sometimes men have a harder time dealing with the girls’ fear. Women often have a smoother touch in the way they explain things compared to a guy."

Recent studies at UCLA have revolutionized our understanding of the way women deal with stress. The standard conception was that stress triggered a fight-or-flight reaction. Co-author of the study, Shelley Taylor, says, "For decades, psychological research maintained that both men and women rely on fight-or-flight to cope with stress – meaning that when confronted by stress, individuals either react with aggressive behaviour, such as verbal conflict and more drastic actions, or withdraw from the stressful situation." On the mountain, this often manifested in men throwing themselves down double black diamond runs with a roar, or tossing their skis in anger after a wipeout.

What Taylor found is that while men often react to stress with a fight-or-flight response, women are more likely to manage their stress with a tend-and-befriend response by nurturing their children or seeking social contact, especially with other women. In stressful situations, women will urge each other on, which may explain why women-only ski clinics have proved so successful at helping female skiers push through their perceived limits. Participants frequently comment on how much they gained from the solidarity of the sisterhood, a pleasant divergence from their more usual on-mountain experience of hustling to keep up, and not hold the boys back, or working hard to prove they are just as good, and worthy of the ultimate compliment, "she skis like a guy."

Feminising the ski experience means more than offering women-only ski programs, or increasing the number of female teaching staff, both of which require a change in the culture within the industry itself, and a commitment to nurturing emerging female talent, rather than squeezing them out in a constant show of machismo and chest-beating. Reaching out to women clients means working from the top down – making senior positions in the industry available to women, providing opportunities for younger instructors to ski with talented senior female athletes, who will inspire and mentor them, and hopefully, encourage them to stay in the industry.

It also means making sure the entire resort experience is a class act. Because women still bear the brunt of the chores of child-raising and household management, and increasingly are also juggling careers and social obligations, a true vacation for them also includes time to relax and be pampered, to get away from the cooking, cleaning and looking after the kids for a while. Kirsty Allan explains: "Most women want to do more than just ski on their holiday. Things like good comfortable accommodation, handy restaurants, spa facilities, and shops are important. Plenty of things to keep the kids entertained. Things we can do as a family when not skiing. Ski school for the kids. Things like poor accommodation, dirty washrooms, poor food, poor childcare, long queues and crowded restaurants are noted by women and can spoil their overall enjoyment, putting them off that particular resort or worse putting them off skiing altogether."

They hold up half the sky, and more often than not, they’re controlling the purse strings as well. Catering to women guests is a no-brainer for snowsports businesses, but the bottom line is, if the ladies are happy, everybody wins.



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