Women’s Social Media group driving change at Mountain Training

A Facebook group for women connected to Mountain Training qualifications is credited with influencing Mountain Training’s gender equality strategy and steering the content for the successful Women in Mountain Training Conference, held for the first time in October 2022.

The Women in Mountain Training Facebook group, set up in October 2015, has grown to a 3,000 strong community designed to support women working towards or beyond all of Mountain Training's qualifications. Mountain Training consulted the group about content for the recent conference, which prompted nearly 100 comments and ultimately shaped the entire conference programme.

Cath Luke, Mountain Training England’s Governance and Equity Officer said, “The response from the Facebook group was amazing, it steered the programme towards women-specific topics including the female lifecycle, nutrition and the challenges tackled by women in the industry such as pregnancy and parenthood, managing menstruation and working through peri-menopause and menopause. It was so valuable to have direct input from the people we want to support.”

Mountain Training would like to thank members of the Facebook group for embracing the idea of the conference and for contributing to its development and delivery.



"We were delighted to host the first ever Women in Mountain Training Conference," said Helen Barnard, Plas y Brenin Chief Instructor.

"Our role as the National Centre is to collaborate with partners, organisations and individuals to empower women and girls to participate in adventurous activities. Having a shared understanding of the barriers to participation will enable the outdoor sector to become more diverse and inclusive in the future.

"We look forward to supporting and contributing to future events."

Mountain Training's focus now turns to sharing key learnings from the conference so that more people are included in the conversation and can start to influence some of the change that's required.

Learn from the conference

Recordings, reports and presentations from the conference are now available to the public: Women in Mountain Training Conference 2022