A MINA HUBBARD EXPLOROR
In a field still dominated by men, some women have stood out for their role in the wild world. But, according to some studies, even today women are more afraid of being attacked in a forest by men than by bears.
In the summer of 1905, a young canadian widow, Mina Hubbardhe departed on an expedition to map the northeastern corner of Labrador, from Lake Melville to Ungava Bay, an Arctic Ocean cove. It was an unusual challenge for an old nurse who had abandoned school at age 16.
Her husband, Leonidas Hubbard, had died in the same harsh environment two years earlier. Mina, 35, intended to complete her work. Thus, he says, in an analysis of the representation of the woman in this area, the writer Sarah Lonsdale.
Despite having faced Several physical dangers on the 966 -kilometer trip – hunger, bears, cold and fast rivers – their biggest antagonists were reporters and editors of the press of outdoors From the early twentieth century, dominated by men in North America.
The popular Outing magazine, for which Leonidas Hubbard had written, was the most striking. His editor, Caspar Whitney, thundered in an editorial that “The Widow” should not be in the wildlet alone talk about her.
The wild nature was not a place for a white woman, especially if accompanied by first nation guides (the natives).
Other newspapers described it as a mourning hysterical. This was the only explanation they were able to find for their decision to make such a long and arduous trip.
When he had already traveled 500 kilometers in his expedition, after finding the naskapi river source, the New York Times reported on the first page she had given up, overcome by difficulties and deprivation.
The newspaper stated that a man, an explorer named Dillon Wallace, who was also in northern Labrador, was “advancing beyond any previous track of a white man.” In factHubbard had not given up, Neither Wallace had reached her. It would arrive at Ungava Bay several weeks before the group.
But even in modern kinegetic societies, while women are concerned only with hunting hunting near the village or camp, it is men who depart, often for many days, to hunt larger hunting and status.
Myths from around the world have told listeners and readers that women who move away from the city’s wall, the village palace or camp are supernatural, monsters, or banned by alleged sins against society.
In a more recent echo of the media coverage of the journey of Mina Hubbard, Kenya, in the 1980s and 1990s, the environmental activist Wangari Maathai It was attacked and despised. He was even cursed for planting trees in forests intended for development by the country’s then president, Daniel Arap Moi.
Your crime? Wanting to wage disastrous desertification and soil erosion and give rural women power by planting 30 million trees.
When a British climber Alison Hargreaves was killed in the HimalayasIn 1995, the news focused on the fact that she was a mother and wife. The historical records of the newspapers found during my investigation accused her roundually of abandoning her lead role in taking care of her children.
The Sunday Times called him “an obsessed mother,” while Independent titled: “A woman’s dangerous ambition on peaks.”
The story is still the present
Women who received neutral or positive coverage for their work tend to have a novelty value, or have done such an extraordinary feat that they were women was part of the narrative.
A entomologista Evelyn Cheesman began to collect insects on the Pacific Islands, from the galapagos to New Guinea. His work led to the creation of a biological dividing line between different ecosystems in the new hebrides, which was named after Cheesman’s line, and his contribution to science was a big news to the written press. At the time, it was also ignored by the press.
The stories of these women are forgotten by history books, at a time when they still show that women (and black and Hispanic) who walk in the US are more afraid of being attacked by men than by bears or other wild animals.
