gender
A Path to Environmentalism
Black Girl Dangerous contributor, Jasmine Kumalah, succinctly and precisely discusses her own path to environmentalism, which includes understanding the complexity of human relationships to the environment and social hierarchies. Read here.
Dude Grades: A Look at Sexism in Climbing Grades
A look at how men have dominated the rating system in climbing and how the impacts women or more accurately, people who do not have a “typical” male body (if there even is such a thing). Read here.
NADOHE Standards of Professional Practice for Chief Diversity Officers
The National Association of Diversity Officers in High Education has created this useful guide that covers everything from the need for a Chief Diversity Officer position to the scope of that person’s responsibilities and areas of competency. Though geared toward institutions of higher education, this guide is useful for any organization seeking to hire a Chief Diversity Officer. Read more here.
Intersection podcast
We could try to describe this podcast, but their own description says it best: “New Republic editor Jamil Smith explores how race, gender, and all the ways we identify ourselves and one another intersect. He brings in journalists, activists, politicians, and everyday folks like you to fuel the conversation.”
Listen here.
Unconscious Bias @ Work: Google Ventures
This video documents the unconscious bias training run by Google Ventures for Google’s employees. Though the training is in the context of gender and race bias in the high tech sector, much of the research and findings are relevant to the environmental and outdoor education sector. Watch here.
A University Recognizes a Third Gender: Neutral
This article discusses the growing wave of institutions of higher education who are providing students with the choice of self-identifying their own gender. Read more here.
DownloadIceberg of Diversity Activity
This activity explores the meaning and implications of diversity, including visible and invisible facets of diversity and how we make assumptions about people based on what we see.
DownloadThe Power House Activity
This is a relatively safe approach to exploring privilege and power structures in a way that minimizes feelings of resentment and empowering participants to be allies. Use this as an alternative to the Privilege Walk if you want to lower risk. But realize that this activity is too safe in that it doesn’t require that participants talk about their lived experiences of privilege.
DownloadWhite Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
This seminal work by feminist Peggy McIntosh continues to be the source for the “go to” activity on privilege-the “Privilege Walk.” Social justice facilitators typically ask participants to line up, then ask each of the questions in the series posed by McIntosh, with participants stepping forward if their answer to the question is yes and backward if their answer to the question is no. The activity can be high-risk, so don’t facilitate it unless you are with a group that has established mutual trust and rapport, and unless you can frame it up in a way that inspires learning and behavior change, and not shame and resentment. For more information about the activity along with a customized list of questions geared toward participants in the outdoor and environmental space, please search our list of activities.
DownloadTips for having difficult conversations
We have compiled some tips and helpful phrases that can help you have that difficult conversation with someone, regardless of your relationship to them.
DownloadIdentity signs
This activity is designed to get participants thinking about their own identities in relation to systems of power and privilege, as well as understand how others’ identities are influenced by power and privilege.
DownloadIn/Out of the Box
This is an activity that allows students to discuss how society assumes different qualities regarding different identities and then how they or other people they know transcend those imposed qualities.
Download