By Emma Maple | Editor-in-Chief
During the fall semester of 2022, Anna Steere, ’23, had her world shaken up.
Steere works for the UREC and the climbing wall with a few other women. During a training, one of her coworkers began expressing frustration that she had been working at the rock wall with another female coworker for over two years, and had never been taught how to lead climb. A male coworker who had worked at the wall for less than two months had been taught these skills without having to ask.
“That kind of hit me in the gut,” Steere said. Steere knows how to lead climb, so her first thought in response to this was, “Oh, I could just teach them.”
But Steere felt that option wouldn’t solve the problem. “What about the other women, and non-binary, and trans individuals who are facing the same sort of discrimination?” she said.
“Obviously there’s people that want to climb and don’t feel safe. I’ve had people being like, ‘Oh, I love to climb. I just literally don’t feel safe going to the wall by myself,’ because of judgment, or whatever the reasons are,” Steere said. “I hate that.”
So instead, she chartered Womxn Rock to remedy the gender disparity she’s seen in rock climbing. Six women and nine men work at the rock wall on campus, and professional climber Sasha DiGiulian estimates that the ratio of men to women in climbing is 60 to 40%.
She said the Womxn Rock club has two purposes: first, to create a community where people can feel safe with new things; and second, to model an outdoor mentorship setting where those who are experienced in outdoor recreation can impart their skills and knowledge to newcomers.
This move toward inclusiveness in rock climbing had precedent. In the spring of 2022, the UREC began hosting a once-a-month Gals and Pals Night. Occurring on the first Friday of every month from 7 to 10 pm, this event allowed women and non-binary individuals to borrow shoes for free and climb in a community of similar individuals.
Steere said during Gals and Pals Night, students would tell her this was the only night they felt comfortable climbing. Steere said having a safe space to climb only once a month was simply not enough.
“I want intentional space that can be a model for the rest of the climbing community,” Steere said.
Now that the Womxn Rock club is on the scene, it has replaced Gals and Pals Night and meets every week on Friday nights from 7 pm to 10 pm. Steere wants this club to be an inclusive space for everyone. She has been working with Ayaka Dohi, director of Student Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, to make the club inclusive and welcoming.
“Intersectional feminism is the core foundation of what this club is about,” Steere said.
Steere draws inspiration for the club from other movements she’s seen on Instagram, such as Brown Girls Climb. This account focuses on ensuring BIPOC women, non-binary and trans individuals have a safe space in the climbing community.
“I’m not on that level, I don’t have that kind of education,” Steere said. “I’m a biology major, I only know about slugs and stuff. So that’s been a model [where I’m] trying to learn from them.”
The club’s first event happened in the fall of 2022. They hosted a small lecture explaining who the leaders were and what the mission was, followed by a clinic about different knots. In the spring of 2023, they began hosting climbing events at the UREC climbing wall on Friday nights from 7 to 10 pm. These events start with an hour of skill work, before moving on to free climbing.
Eleanor Bonikowsky, ‘26, one of the members of Womxn Rock, said she is glad she can support Steere and the mission of the club. “In the climbing community, it’s kind of hard for women and underrepresented genders to get involved without feeling intimidation or pressure, because there’s really just a lot of guys that climb.”
Bonikowsky said she is happy with the way the men in the community have responded to this club. “A lot of them have thought it was a really great idea because they can all recognize the fact that they don’t see a lot of people other than them climbing, and they can understand how it can be intimidating, which I respect that they’re able to recognize.”
Steere incorporates a lot of activities into the Womxn Rock events. Bonikowsky said it’s more than just about learning how to climb rocks. There are also games, like rock tag, that allows people to just have fun – which is something climbers can’t always do during the UREC’s normal climbing times.
Bonikowsky said as far as she can tell, most of the people who show up to the climbing events have never climbed before – which is exactly what Steere is hoping for.
Steere hopes that more people who don’t know how to climb or aren’t sure about it will give it a chance.
She said a lot of people don’t come climbing because of a myriad of fears. She said she always wants to ask them, “What is the worst reasonable thing that could happen? A lot of our mental energy is taken up on a daily basis by all these unreasonable or irrational fears… If you’re afraid of heights, come to the climbing wall and we’ll belay you so you literally cannot physically fall. The worst thing that can happen is an alien abduction. And that’s not reasonable.”
In the future, Steere hopes to put on some larger events with the club. One of her ideas is to do a lecture about nutrition for climbers. She also hopes to do more outdoor adventures such as going to Minnehaha and the Cove for bouldering, climbing and cliff jumping.
Steere started this club in her senior year. Even though it means she’ll have less time at Whitworth to lead it, she said that “it needs to be done.”
“I’m not the perfect person for this,” Steere said. “I just had the most free time.”
Since it’s her last year at Whitworth, Steere is worried that people won’t continue on with the club.
In an ideal world, Steere’s hope is that the knowledge from this club will not only help people to feel confident climbing but also show them how to start “their own climbing communities.”
“I see it… expanding. I see people from the club becoming leaders in the Whitworth community and taking the principles that our club was built on and making them commonplace.”
Steere said, “Even if I teach one person one thing, and they teach that to one person, all this work and effort will be worth it.”