By Caity Schneider in 2022.
As the popular saying goes, “the children are our future.” This sentiment often propels a desire to impress upon the minds of kids what we feel is most important, be it worldview, life skills or things we find joy in. As children, we are very impressionable and begin to develop an understanding of our place in the world, most often through the adults in our lives. Thus it is crucial that kids from a young age have positive role models to look up to as they navigate through their physical, mental and emotional development.
As a female in a male-dominated industry, I would argue that not only do young girls need positive role models in their lives, but more specifically they need positive female role models. In an environment where she is the minority, it is substantially more crucial she is able to realise her capacity to succeed. When no one around her looks, acts, feels, or thinks like her, it can be extremely alienating. Furthermore, if there is no extrinsic feedback challenging these feelings of alienation, she begins to internalise them further fuelling the sense that she does not belong. Snowboarding is for boys.
However, if she is able to look towards, or up to, a woman who has gone before her and blazed a trail, she is more likely to identify with her and feel she is able to do the same. In her book Anonymous is a Woman, Dr. Nina Ansary states that “it’s hard to be what we cannot see.” Thus, where she is seen, she can inspire. In Vol. 95 of the American Economic Review, a journal article by Eric P. Bettinger and Bridget Terry Long, documents the results of a study where female students were more likely to choose a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) major when learning under a female professor. I believe this information can be applied to the Snowsports industry as well. It’s possible our young female athletes will be more likely to choose to pursue snowboarding, competitively or for pleasure, under female instruction or coaching.
When a young girl comes in for a snowboard lesson and is greeted by someone she can identify with, she expands what is possible. Her feelings of alienation have been
challenged by ambition and she sets her aim higher. I can do this. Snowboarding is for girls. Snowboarding is for me.
The more girls we can inspire to choose snowboarding and pursue careers in action sports, the more of a consistent presence we can establish which will ameliorate the
lack of female representation in the industry moving forward. The goal would be that one day it will be a non-issue and the ramifications will be obsolete. So yes, the children are our future, but more boldly I say, girls are the future.