“When I grew up, there weren't many gyms around. I had to drive around 40-50min one way to get to the next climbing gym with my dad. There also weren't so many climbers around my age with whom I really could train, so I mostly trained by myself. However, if I'm being honest I wouldn't have been fully by myself most of the time. One girl, Steffi Pichler, lived really close to one of the gyms I normally drove to and she sometimes came to train there as well, and another girl my age was normally training in the other gym. Did we train with each other? Did we see it as a huge advantage that we were all at the same level and could have pushed each other to get even better? No. We considered each other as fierce opponents – despite us both being part of the Youth National Team and making podiums internationally. Steffi is three months younger than me, which meant that every second year we were in the same category. Whenever that was the case, we wouldn't talk to each other for pretty much a year. And whenever that year was over and we were in different categories again... we'd suddenly contact each other again, we would train together again, we would hang out even outside climbing... and we were literally best friends. 

It's weird to think back to these times and crazy to think how we behaved. Thinking back now, I feel like we might have missed a huge opportunity to have trained with each other – also when we were in the same category. I feel like we could have pushed each other even further (because we all know, training with others who are at your same level is so much more fun and motivating than to just be training by yourself). We didn't know better back then.

Rivalry can happen. But everything has its costs. Am I proud of how we behaved? No. I for sure know now the costs we had to pay back then. And even if it wasn't only for pushing ourselves in climbing – but also for having a friend your age – not only every second year – and not being all the time by yourself in the gym. To finish this story: the older be became, the better friends we became. Now, Steffi Pichler is coaching the Kletterverband Niederösterreich youth climbing team and we sometimes even work together (she as their trainer, me as her team's sport psychologist). Lucky we became older and smarter! 😉”

– Madeleine Crane

This is just one of many examples of having experienced rivalry in climbing. Rivalry happens in all areas of our lives and climbing isn’t spared of it. But, is it true that rivalry among female climbers occurs more often than between male climbers? In order to try our best to answer this question, we will focus on female rivalry in climbing today. 

To be honest, there is hardly any literature specifically on this topic but we did some research in other, comparable areas, had a look at different scientific theories and will now share with you why we think they might be applicable to climbing. To clarify one thing at the beginning: we don’t believe that there is no rivalry between male climbers. 

• “She said she climbed a 7a in Fontainebleau, but I don’t believe she’d be strong enough for that.”

• “I constantly compare myself with women my age. It is something I’m not at all proud of and that I don’t like about myself.” (Jule Wurm) 

Generally speaking, it seems a rather normal phenomenon for female climbers to develop rivalries against other female climbers and similarly, for male climbers to develop rivalry against other male climbers. This is because rivalry is often experienced between individuals who have some similarities (e.g. being the same body size), who are exposed to repeated comparison and evenly matched contests. Unlike competition, which is defined as a situation in which competitors’ results are opposed to one another, rivalry describes a relationship between two individuals. This relationship is characterized by an increased subjective importance placed upon competitive outcomes – independent of objective characteristics of the situation. Meaning rivalry can for example happen between two climbers who compete with one another even though there is no objective competition situation. This can happen during a climbing holiday on rock, or on your normal Tuesday night training at the gym.

Is climbing a male dominated space?

For a long time, sports has been a male-only or at least male-dominated activity. In many sports, females were not even allowed to participate. Even if it has been changing over the past few years with climbing becoming more popular, climbing is still a rather male-dominated sport. Until recently, there were only very few strong female climbers. Role models of my childhood were Kilian Fischhuber, Wolfgang Güllich, Chris Sharma… In fact, I can’t remember a single female role model I had growing up. Nowadays this difference in actual numbers, or revenues in climbing might not be that different – compared to other sports where this difference is still very visible, such as in soccer in Germany. The differences in e.g. salary, spectator numbers, reputation in society are still huge between male and female soccer athletes. In professional climbing, this difference seems to not be as big. But if we look into a normal climbing or bouldering gym, it is very likely that we will still find more male than female climbers there. 

Similarly, females are still in the minority in many workspaces especially in high management and leadership positions. Of the Fortune 500, which is an annual list of 500 of the largest US companies ranked by total revenue, only 7 % of companies had a female CEO.

This brings us to one potential contributor to female rivalry: the roles identities one takes on when we are in such environments.

Role identity and female rivalry in an environment with male dominance

Generally speaking, we take on different roles as we are all part of different social groups and networks (family, at work, friend groups, climbing crew...). In our family, we might be the loving, understanding and patient mum, while we are the motivated, psyched, determined optimist in the climbing gym. Sometimes we choose the role, sometimes this comes automatically in the process of a group building process and sometimes it is prescribed. But more important: we expect certain behaviors with certain roles. 

Prescriptive gender stereotypes – meaning what we believe women and men should be like – are still massively present in our society. Most of us experience stereotypical role attributions on a daily basis. What are such stereotypical roles of women? Research suggests that we expect women to react more emotionally, to be friendly and smile more often than men. Or as Sheryl Sandberg has said,  “women aren’t any meaner to women than men are to one another. Women are just expected to be nicer. We stereotype men as aggressive and women as kind. When women violate these stereotypes, we judge them harshly.” 

When reading this, I asked myself the question whether I expected women in my environment to be kinder than men. Do I evaluate women differently from men when interacting with them e.g. at the climbing gym? What expectations do I have of female climbers? Are there any? If I’m honest, yes there are: female climbers are often expected to be nice, humble, friendly, diffident. They aren’t supposed to talk about their results and accomplishments. Women are penalised for ambition, toughness, or even communicating directly. And while it’s ok for men to do so, if women do that, they break social norms and they are called up themselves, arrogant… However, behaving against social norms and social expectations can lead to others feeling threatened – an in terms of women, to criticism, passive aggressiveness and in the worst case bullying.

When talking about bullying, we should definitely draw parallels to work places which are rather male dominant. Given the fact that the ratio of women to men on leadership tables is still very uneven, it is no surprise this bullying behaviour also occurs in such male dominated organizations. This “only one seat at the table for a woman'' behaviour creates the image of scarcity for all other female colleagues. Research has found that in male dominated organizations many women reported having experienced being bullied by female colleagues. Women striving for higher positions seemed to assess their female colleagues in management and leadership positions negatively and questioned their credentials. However, on the other hand, the term Queen Bee has been labeled by researchers for women in senior positions, who use their power and social stature to manipulate others to think less of female colleagues in a demoralising manner. This Queen Bee Syndrome can have a negative effect on women’s careers and for the organizations as a whole. But we should also not confuse Queen Bees with strong and ambitious women in the workplace in general.

Let’s draw a parallel to climbing again: as already said, climbing is still rather male-dominated space. There is a certain scarcity for being the “only strong female climber” in the gym or at the crag, which can trigger rivalry. Simultaneously, our own role identity might play a big role in how rivalry is triggered.

Thinking back to when I started climbing, I mainly climbed with other men, who were about as strong as me. I started to create this image of myself that I was the female climber who was strong enough to keep up with those men. But this also meant that other women as strong as me who could keep up with these guys were a potential threat to the image I have created of myself. They were my rivals. This led to me rarely climbing with other female climbers – which in hindsight led to a few unnecessary rivalries and lots of missed opportunities. Instead it led to me comparing myself even more, feeling worse about myself and my climbing.

The good news, creating awareness about this issue can be a first and important step to better deal with it. In our next blog post, we’ll  talk about how to end rivalry relationships with other climbers and how to  focus on building a positive relationship. Up front: the more confident you feel, the less you  feel like you’re impacted by other climbers potentially threatening you. 

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This blog post was written by Marieke Nordmann, our current Climbing Psychology intern and passionate climber. As always, our blog posts are science-based. Here is a link to our literature.