Paddling is huge on the east coast. When we're out there no one ever says "so you're a rower?". Hell, in the Dartmouth Valumart one whole wall is a mural dedicated to paddlers and paddling. No surprise then, that the Dartmouth paper put women canoers on the front page. The girls from Banook, Senobe & Orenda encourage others to stick with canoe in spite of the limited opportunites for international competition.

Gender inequality on the water
Female canoeists say they won't switch to kayak: 'We're not going anywhere'

KATE WATSON - THE WEEKLY NEWS
The Dartmouth Cole Harbour Weekly News

Most people don't give a lot of thought to gender equity. In this enlightened day and age, it's taken for granted that males and females deserve equal opportunities in education, in the workforce and in sport.

That's probably why a lot of people are surprised to learn that there is a great and gaping gender divide for athletes who choose to compete in the sport of sprint-canoe racing.

Although the female canoeists train as long and as hard as their male counterparts, it's futile for them to dream of winning medals at the Olympics or even at the World Championships, because there are no women's canoe events at the upper levels of the sport.

Maybe you're thinking, "Well, what about Karen Furneaux? She's been to the Olympics, hasn't she?"

This common question reveals the other great disparity within the paddling world. Women kayakers, of which Karen Furneaux is one, can compete in all the same competitions - though not in all the same distances - as the men.

This raises the question of why a young girl with athletic talent and the hopes of high-level competition would decide to take up the canoe rather than the kayak.

Sixteen-year-old Adrienne Keene from Senobe Aquatic Club on Lake Banook in Dartmouth is a successful competitive canoeist. She says she made the decision to focus on canoe because she found it more challenging and exciting than kayak.

"I love the fact that there's so much technique involved and that you can always improve. You're never going to be perfect."

Jenna Marks, 17, of Banook is a high-level athlete. She was a member of the Canadian Canoe Team at the Lake Placid Invitational this past summer, bringing home medals in all of her four events.

"My brother and my sister were canoers, so I was like five or six when I knew I wanted to be a canoeist," she says. "Even though my parents thought I should switch to kayak because I could go further, I said, 'I don't care, I just want to do something that I love, in spite of the fact that not everybody agrees with it.'"

Jeff Houser, Atlantic Regional High Performance coach for Canoe Kayak Canada, says it is a common misconception that athletes who choose canoe would be just as happy and successful doing kayak.

"Some people feel that offering canoe would lessen the field of athletes for kayak, which is an international discipline," he explains. "I personally think this is not the case, as that would assume athletes who paddle canoe would paddle kayak. It's different and the paddlers are different. The sports share many similarities, but are fundamentally different in the biomechanics of execution. Would hockey players all switch to lacrosse or vice versa if their respective sports were unavailable to them?"

There are many reasons that sprint canoe has not become popular on an international level. Thankfully, we've come a long way from the days when it was argued that women who paddled in sprint canoe were at risk of damaging their reproductive systems. Now, the resistance to adding it to international events has more to do with the paradox of funding in sport.

For many countries, including the United States, sport funding is 100 per cent tied to the potential to go to the Olympics. This creates a chicken-and-egg situation, where there's a lack of resources to attract and sustain female canoers, and without the athletes, there's no reason to push for the inclusion of women's canoe in the Olympic Games.

"If women's canoe were an Olympic event, you'd see a lot of other countries jump on board," says Houser. "But with so many countries tied to their Olympic funding in terms of what they can do in development, they just can't afford to add canoe."

For a women's event to become an Olympic sport it must be practiced by at least 40 countries on three different continents. While that goal may be a long way off, Canada has been making steady but slow progress in promoting the sport to other countries.

"Efforts to promote women's canoe have included trips to Russia and Europe," says Graham Barton, high- performance director of Canoe Kayak Canada. "It was an exhibition event at the 2003 World Championships and has been included on the race card at the Pan Am Championships. And, at the very least, we have an opportunity to include them as an exhibition event at the 2009 Senior World Championships being held in Dartmouth."

Though there is some small hope for the future, right now the disparity of opportunity between male and female canoeists and between female kayakers and canoeists means that women in canoe are not always taken seriously.

Maria Halavrezos, 16, of Senobe has been dedicated to canoe since she was 11. She was also a medal-winning member of the Canadian Team at Lake Placid this year.

"For me, the thing that hurts the most is the lack of respect. I would love to see women's canoe get the respect that it deserves, even if it never makes it to the Olympics," she says. "It seems that even though we train with the boys, have the same coaches as the boys, have the same practices as the boys, people still look at us differently. Some look down their noses at us and call us WICS."

"WIC" stands only for Woman in Canoe, but it has come to be used as a disparaging term.

Halavrezos sounds resigned when she says, "When you make a team, you have to get your mind around the fact that there are going to be people who are going to mutter 'WIC' under their breath when you walk by."

"Yeah, they're like, 'Why are you here?'" adds Marks.

One answer to that question seems to be because these young women feel a responsibility to change things for the girls that come after them.

"When I race canoe, I think I'm doing something that is actually good. I'm not just winning or getting medals," says Marks. "I'm doing something that will affect other people so that younger kids are going to get to do more than I did."

"The younger girls, the girls we coach, need someone to look up to. So, we work hard to keep a presence in the sport, so people know we're not giving up," says Halavrezos. "We're not going to switch to kayak. We're not going anywhere!"

Twenty-two-year-old Sara Lawlor of Lake Echo has won medals in women's canoe at every level open to her. There's really nowhere left for her to compete.

"My life would be totally different if I'd had higher levels to compete at," she says. "I retired because I'd done everything, so I decided that school was more important, now. But if I'd had the opportunity to go to the Olympics, I would have sacrificed everything to get there."

Still, she only has words of encouragement for young women in canoe.

"I would say to stick with canoe, no matter what anyone says. Don't let the fact that it's not in the Olympics change your mind. Think in the present and don't worry about the future, because if you enjoy canoe, you should do it."

watsons5@accesswave.ca