BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE: PERSPECTIVES FROM A MODERN FEMALE INVOLVED IN FIELD GEOLOGY

Field studies in geology are essential to a student’s curriculum. They are the foundation of further laboratory analyses, and are conducted typically through a significant amount of travel, requiring outdoor expertise such as hiking or climbing to approach and interpret to rock exposures. Field geology throughout history has been documented as a traditionally male-dominated occupation, requiring strength, endurance, and the ability to travel to and stay in desolate and often risky regions on a global scale. In more modern times, however, those involved in field geology have begun to break away from this classical mindset and become a more open to field studies as a practical prospect for women.

Modern women have the desire to pursue career paths now more than ever before in industry and other “dirty” jobs. Studies in geosciences are a curriculum that not all women feel they can pursue as a prospective career due to family, physical, and mental constraints. From personal experience partaking in field work I have discovered that success in geoscience studies outweighs any struggle. Throughout my field research I have noticed an increasing interest from women in areas of all geosciences and the rising hope for the demise of the question, “Where are all the women in field geology?”