When it comes to management ideas for this topic, you find yourself in between two issues, wanting to make women and all park goers feel safe and comfortable but you also don't want there to be too many human encroachments to ruin the natural aspect you came for. Here are some suggestions from the women in Wesely's and Gaarder's (2004) study: emergency phones or call boxes at trailheads, better lighting in the parking lots, clearly marked trails, and more park staff walking the trails. I agree with some of these suggestions, I think trails do need to be marked better. I went hiking every Sunday over this last summer and often my group and I would stop and have to make sure we were going the right way. But by the time you were up the mountains and, on the trail, you no longer have cell service to check if you're going the right way. The idea of more lighting and call boxes might work for city parks and trails. These are not realistic solutions for hikes away from civilization, so this would not be a solution that could be implemented everywhere easily.
Other ideas to help reduce the feelings of fear in a park setting are making sure paths are designed to keep a critical mass of people in the sight of others at all times. This might include closing off certain paths at low-use times, such as night, to assure greater presence of people in higher use areas (Jorgensen et al. 2013). This supports their finding of higher concealment yielding greater fear and low concealment; additionally, their study stated that participants felt more fear and weariness when they couldn't see anyone else at a public recreation area.
Based on what I've read, I think that the easiest things that would be good to implement to help the management of this problem are:
- Opening up areas by reducing shrubbery and removing low branches
- This way the natural beauty is still upheld but while allowing for visual acuity in the area
- Adding clear trail markers
- For those that choose solo recreation it's wise to let friends and family know where you're going and with a clear marker it ensures that you are where you said you would be
- We need to normalize the achievements of women in the outdoors
- Social media is a strong and powerful tool. With it we can help bring awareness to all of the women who go against the gender norms that is expected of women.
- Social media is a strong and powerful tool. With it we can help bring awareness to all of the women who go against the gender norms that is expected of women.
The future rests not in if we will answer this dilemma but when and how and ultimately who will take the lead.
(Warren 2015)
(Warren 2015)