Ever wonder why you see so few younger women out on the birding trail? Catherine Hamilton can shed a bit of light on the subject. BTW, be sure to browse around her site after reading the particularly poignant post we’ve linked to… Catherine is a terrific artist!
Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds in 2003, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.
Interesting read – so far I haven’t experienced that specific situation but I am all too familiar with being overlooked and second guessed and having my input outright dismissed simply because I am young (and I look about 10 years younger than I am apparently, to make things worse!) and female. Sad to think I may even encounter that crap out birding and trying to enjoy nature.
I don’t get it: birders always try to convince the non-birders around them, or society at large, that they are neither geeks nor insane but ordinary folks. And they are. So why are we so very surprised to meet birders who are racist or sexist or chauvinistic or just a plain ol’ pain in the behind? Birders are neither better nor worse than the rest – birders are “normal” and that sadly (and inexcusably) means that some of us will frequently display very rude and bad and inacceptable behaviour towards the people around them, or the nature around them. The tragedy of what Catherine has experienced is that such behaviour is still so prevalent in society and expands to all aspects of social life, even birding.
I agree with Jochen, it reflects badly on us as people in general, not birders.
It reflects on us poorly as people unless we, as birders, fail to take action to combat sexism, racism, etc, in birding. Failing to act to stamp out these traits in the birding world would reflect poorly upon us as birders just as when, say, a political party fails to stamp out such behavior it would reflect poorly upon them.
I have been invited to bird with some Birds Korea members this weekend…as a birder! Grant will be working and I would be mad to not go and see what is out there beyond the Busan City boundaries! He is madly jealous…as a birder would be, but I will bring back some photos for him to look at….bird porn!
It’s too bad it took me till now to find this post. I’m both young and a woman. I’m leaving my local chapter due to an imposed glass ceiling…imposed, not by men, but by older women! It has been over a year, and I have not been allowed to move up or into the more important positions in that chapter, despite them constantly begging people to volunteer. I am only given duties that relate to traits one would assume are for women only (dealing with people such as fundraising or field trips); duties seen as more manly (such as editing the newsletter), despite me begging to do them, have been passed right on by me.
At the last meeting, the president basically stated that I was too old for her interest in getting young people interested in birding. I AM 29!
It is good that I’m obsessed with birds, because anyone else treated the same way would lose their interest altogether. These issues exist because they persist in human society, so of course they will show up in our not-so-insular world of birding, unfortunately.
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