Abstract ID: 3.11415 | Accepted as Talk | Talk | TBA | TBA

Women have been participating in the sport of ski jumping dating back to the nineteenth century, yet have faced considerable obstacles on their pathway towards inclusion. The history of women in ski jumping and their discrimination in the sport has been documented; however, more research is needed to capture first-hand experiences of women in ski jumping and to better understand gender, international tensions, and advocacy efforts in the sport in the early twenty-first century, including the women’s ski jumping lawsuit against the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games (VANOC) in Canada. Constructions of women in mountain sports transcended national borders as international women ski jumpers fought for inclusion and pushed boundaries against patriarchal policy and organizational exclusion under the International Olympic Committee (IOC) headquartered in Switzerland. Nineteenth century echoes of gender stereotypes and norms reverberated along mountain peaks from the Swiss Alps to the Canadian Rocky Mountains for women’s ski jumpers into the twenty-first century.

This history paper uses archival research and oral history interviews to capture the stories of women in ski jumping, track changing perceptions of gender in the sport, and to better understand international advocacy efforts and tensions as women ski jumpers negotiated their position within a male-dominated sport and organization. This paper contributes to a growing literature on women in ski jumping and highlights the importance of international voices who fought for change in mountain sports.