| The purpose of this study was to examine the nature and operation of the gender system working within and through an outdoor adventure education program for adolescents, and to explore the implications of the gender system with reference to agency and empowerment for girls. Field research with four separate groups (three coeducational and one all girls) was conducted at an outdoor education center in Australia. Multiple methods of data collection were used, including observation, interviewing and document review.; The gender system operating within this program worked through a complex web of relationships between and among ten major themes, made up of forty-six subcategories. Major themes were: gender process; physicality; relationship to others; maintenance in the outdoors; leadership and decision making; teacher intervention; school goals; voice; self; and power. Pre-learned gender ideologies were brought to all groups, and these influenced group process and led to a system that operated through hegemonic masculinity that accorded greater power to some boys. Although gender stereotypes and gendered roles were a strong force within the groups, there were multiple ways of claiming voice, identity and power, lending support to the concept of gender as a social construct that is produced and reproduced through the actions of individuals. Sanctions could be applied to boys as well as to girls to maintain the gender order, and within the system there was also room for transgression. Although the all girls group displayed the greatest amount of gender role experimentation they still adhered to gender ideologies, hypothesizing about how the camp would be if they were to do it again with boys.; Teachers used covert strategies to foster gender equity and to counter gender ideologies. Although many students crossed gender boundaries, the gender system was resistant to change, suggesting a need for teachers to address gender overtly by bringing it into processing sessions.; Rather then viewing gender as a categorical variable, more contextual research is needed that focuses on the processes involved in the construction of gender within outdoor education programs. |
