It’s a very different type of venture to a women’s ski and snowboard production company, but for Jen there’s not a million miles between the two. ‘It is very different’, she says, ‘But at the same time, based on the same values and overarching mission that women just deserve better, right?’

We certainly do. Feminism has been slowly creeping into pop culture over the last decade, and rightfully so. If you put the clock back ten years you can see that the action sports industry was void of positive and aspiring female role models for younger girls to look up to, and a gross lack in sponsorship funding for women. It seemed like a desolate no-go terrain for girls who wanted to reach the top. Jen remembers these times also.

‘When I was growing up there was a dearth of women in sports, in snow sports, in business. What we’re doing is more than slapping planks of wood on our feet- we’re shifting an outdated narrative, creating role models, working hard towards levelling the playing field.’

If female empowerment and #ladyboss is a trend, how long will this female empowerment trend last? Will it blow over like most trends and hashtags in this day and age of fleeting attention spans and skittish interests?

“Until we can really get under the hood of these companies to understand how women are actually treated in their companies and equally represented, and until we see more female founders and CEOS, then the #ladyboss thing is just a hashtag” says Jen.

While it’s great to see women being empowered, Jen voices a concern that we are approaching this revolution of gender roles the wrong way. “I like to say that women don’t need to be empowered, they need to be in power. Empowerment connotes that someone else is doing something for you- the opposite of empowerment”she says.

“I’m a pragmatist, just because women are trending right now, I’m not convinced that our progress will be sustained. We are going to have to fight for it if we don’t want to take two steps forward, one step back when the next hot thing hits the market.”

A conversation with Jen is eye opening, sitting five thousand miles away in the beautiful snowy mountains of the U.S. Rockies, she can completely change your view on feminism and stir a sense of passion inside you that we just aren’t getting enough.

Maybe we should embrace Jen’s ‘bottom-up’ approach to social change by tackling it at the cusp of the problem. Until there is an equal balance of men and women in top CEO positions in the outdoors industry and representing the competition at sporting events, along with equal sponsorship funding and equal pay for equal work, this spotlight on women in sports and business is going to remain confined to Instagram feeds and ‘inspirational’ advertorials that don’t so much benefit women as they do the male-driven brands behind the campaigns.

The superficial illusion of change can fool us to thinking that things are looking up, but being tools for brands to further their own interests instead of there being a basis of real, solid change shows that it’s going to take a bit more fighting yet.

But there is an answer, put driven women like Jen at the helm and others will follow suit. She throws herself into the cause tooth and nail and while in the past there may have been a lady-shaped void in the action sports industry, with role models like her, maybe there won’t be for much longer.