Strong,active women: (Re)doing rural femininity through equestrian sport and leisure

Abstract

Horse riding is a popular leisure activity within rural Britain. Straddling two masculinized social contexts – rural, land-based society and sport/physical recreation – horse riding is a feminized, yet mixed-sex, milieu. This article presents data from an ethnography of the social world of horse riding to consider how women within this context do and redo gender in ways that may begin to challenge ideas about what women are, and what they are capable of, within rural and sporting contexts. Women’s active leisure in the countryside has been rendered largely invisible for decades, yet women’s sport/physical recreation forms an important part of rural leisure worlds. This ethnographic study of women and horse riding offers examples of how feminine identities help shape the rural leisure landscape in ways that begin to redefine gender relations and gender identities within the British countryside in small, yet potentially significant, ways.

Keywords

equestrianism identity rurality ‘doing gender’

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adelman

Becker

(2013) Transition and transgression: Women who ride the rodeo in southern Brazil. In: Adelman

Knijnik

(eds) Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding around the World, London: Springer, pp. 73–90.

Andersson

Lehtola

(2011) Regulating the new equine industry in Finland: Wicked problems, governance models and gendered power structures. Sociologia Ruralis 51(4): 387–402.

Azzarito

(2009) The Panopticon of physical education: Pretty, active and ideally white. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy 14(1): 19–39.

BHIC (British Horse Industry Confederation) (2009) Size and scope of the equine sector. Available at: http://www.bhic.co.uk/downloads/sizescope.pdf (accessed 11 March 2011).

BHS (British Horse Society) (2012) Equestrian statistics. Available at: http://www.bhs.org.uk/our-charity/press-centre/equestrian-statistics (accessed 24 September 2013).

Birke

Brandt

(2009) Mutual corporeality: Gender and human/horse relationships. Women’s Studies International Forum 32: 189–197.

Birke

Hockenhull

Creighton

(2010) The horse’s tale: Narratives of caring for/about horses. Society and Animals 18: 331–347.

Bock

(2006) Rural gender identities in North and South. In: Bock

Shortall

(eds) Rural Gender Relations: Issues and Case Studies, Wallingford: CABI Publishing, pp. 1–15.

Brandth

(2002) Gender identity in European family farming: A literature review. Sociologia Ruralis 42(3): 181–200.

10.

Brandth

Haugen

(2005) Doing rural masculinity: From logging to outfield tourism. Journal of Gender Studies 14(1): 13–22.

11.

Bryant

Pini

(2009) Gender, class and rurality: Australian case studies. Journal of Rural Studies 25: 48–57.

12.

Bunce

(1994) The Countryside Ideal: Anglo-American Images of Landscape, London: Routledge.

13.

Butler

(2013a) Not a job for ‘girly-girls’: Horseracing, gender and work identities. Sport in Society 16(10): 1309–1325.

14.

Butler

(2013b) Becoming ‘one of the lads’: Women, horseracing and gender in the United Kingdom. In: Adelman

Knijnik

(eds) Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding around the World, London: Springer, pp. 55–72.

15.

Butler

Charles

(2012) Exaggerated femininity and tortured masculinity: Embodying gender in the horseracing industry. The Sociological Review 60: 676–695.

16.

Butler

(1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’, New York: Routledge.

17.

Bye

(2009) ‘How to be a rural man’: Young men’s performances and negations of rural masculinities. Journal of Rural Studies 25: 278–288.

18.

Cassidy

(2002) The Sport of Kings: Kinship, Class and Thoroughbred Breeding in Newmarket, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

19.

Clément-Guillotin

Chalabaev

Fontayne

(2012) Is sport still a masculine domain? A psychological glance. International Journal of Sport Psychology 43(1): 67–78.

20.

Connell

(2010) Doing, undoing, or redoing gender? Learning from the workplace experiences of transpeople. Gender and Society 24(1): 31–55.

21.

Connell

(1987) Gender and Power, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

22.

Dashper

(2012) Together, yet still not equal? Sex integration in equestrian sport. Asia-Pacific Journal of Health, Sport and Physical Education 3(3): 213–225.

23.

Dashper

(2013) Beyond the binary: Gender integration in equestrian sport. In: Adelman

Knijnik

(eds) Gender and Equestrian Sport, London: Springer, pp. 37–53.

24.

Dashper

(2015) Rural tourism: Opportunities and challenges. In: Dashper

(ed.) Rural Tourism: An International Perspective, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, pp. 1–20.

25.

Engh

(2011) Tackling femininity: The heterosexual paradigm and women’s soccer in South Africa. The International Journal of the History of Sport 28(1): 137–152.

26.

Finley

(2010) Skating femininity: Gender manoeuvring in women’s roller derby. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 39(4): 359–387.

27.

Fletcher

Dashper

(2013) ‘Bring on the dancing horses!’ Ambivalence and class obsession within British media reports of the dressage at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Sociological Research Online 18(2): 17. DOI: 10.5153/sro.3040.

28.

Frost

(2005) Theorizing the young woman in the body. Body and Society 11(1): 63–85.

29.

Garrod

Wornell

Youell

(2006) Re-conceptualising rural resources as countryside capital: The case of rural tourism. Journal of Rural Studies 11: 117–128.

30.

Goodwin

(1999) The importance of ethology in understanding the behaviour of the horse. Equine Veterinary Journal 31(S28): 15–19.

31.

Gray

(2009) The emotional labour of nursing: Defining and managing emotions in nursing work. Nurse Education Today 29(2): 168–175.

32.

Hargreaves

(1994) Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women’s Sport, London: Routledge.

33.

Hedenborg

Hedenborg White

(2012) Changes and variations in patterns of gender relations in equestrian sports during the second half of the twentieth century. Sport in Society 15(3): 302–319.

34.

Hedenborg

Hedenborg White

(2013) From glamour to drudgery: Changing gender patterns in the equine sector – A comparative study of Sweden and Great Britain in the twentieth century. In: Adelman

Knijnik

(eds) Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding around the World, London: Springer, pp. 15–36.

35.

Heley

(2010) The new squirearchy and emergent cultures of the middle classes in rural areas. Journal of Rural Studies 26: 321–331.

36.

Jackson

(2007) Paddock Paradise: A Guide to Natural Horse Boarding, Centerton, AR: Star Ridge Publishing.

37.

Keaveney

(2008) Equines and their human companions. Journal of Business Research 61: 444–454.

38.

Krane

(2001) We can be athletic and feminine, but do we want to? Challenging hegemonic femininity in sport. Quest 53(1): 115–133.

39.

Laoire

(2002) Young farmers, masculinities and change in rural Ireland. Irish Geography 35(1): 16–27.

40.

Latimer

Birke

(2009) Natural relations: Horses, knowledge and technology. The Sociological Review 57(1): 1–27.

41.

Lenskyj

(2003) Out on the Field: Gender, Sport and Sexualities, Toronto: Women’s Press.

42.

Little

(2002) Rural geography: Rural gender identity and the performance of masculinity and femininity in the countryside. Progress in Human Geography 26(5): 665–670.

43.

Little

(2007) Constructing nature in the performance of rural heterosexualities. Society and Space 25: 851–866.

44.

Little

Austin

(1996) Women and the rural idyll. Journal of Rural Studies 12(2): 101–111.

45.

Little

Panelli

(2003) Gender research in rural geography. Gender, Place and Culture 10(3): 281–289.

46.

Messner

(2002) Taking the Field: Women, Men and Sports, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

47.

Petrzelka

Krannich

Brehm

Trentleman

(2005) Rural tourism and gendered nuances. Annals of Tourism Research 32(4): 1121–1137.

48.

Pfister

(2010) Women in sport – gender relations and future perspectives. Sport in Society 13(2): 234–248.

49.

Plymouth

(2012) Gender in equestrian sports: An issue of difference and equality. Sport in Society 15(3): 335–348.

50.

Reed

(2003) Marginality and gender at work in forestry communities of British Columbia, Canada. Journal of Rural Studies 19(3): 373–389.

51.

Saugeres

(2002a) Of tractors and men: Masculinity, technology and power in a French farming community. Sociologia Ruralis 42: 143–159.

52.

Saugeres

(2002b) The cultural representation of the farming landscape: Masculinity, power and nature. Journal of Rural Studies 18: 373–384.

53.

Schippers

(2007) Recovering the feminine Other: Masculinity, femininity, and gender hegemony. Theory and Society 36(1): 85–102.

54.

Shortall

(2006) Gender and farming: An overview. In: Bock

Shortall

(eds) Rural Gender Relations: Issues and Case Studies, Wallingford: CABI Publishing, pp. 19–26.

55.

Silva

Botelho-Gomes

Goellner

(2012) Masculinities and sport: The emphasis on hegemonic masculinity in Portuguese physical education classes. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 25(3): 269–291.

56.

Suggett

RHG

(1999) Horses and the rural economy in the United Kingdom. Equine Veterinary Journal 31(S28): 31–37.

57.

Sutherland

(2012) Return of the gentleman farmer? Conceptualising gentrification in UK agriculture. Journal of Rural Studies 28(4): 568–576.

58.

Tagg

(2008) ‘Dress as a man’: New Zealand men’s netball as contested terrain. Ethnography 9(4): 457–475.

59.

Tarr

(2008) Habit and conscious control: Ethnography and embodiment in the Alexander Technique. Ethnography 9(4): 477–494.

60.

Trimbur

(2011) ‘Tough love’: Mediation and articulation in the urban boxing gym. Ethnography 12(3): 334–355.

61.

Van Amsterdam

Knoppers

Claringbould

Jongmans

(2012) A picture is worth a thousand words: Constructing (non-)athletic bodies. Journal of Youth Studies 15(3): 293–309.

62.

West

Zimmerman

(1987) Doing gender. Gender and Society 1(2): 125–151.

63.

West

Zimmerman

(2009) Accounting for doing gender. Gender and Society 23(1): 112–122.

64.

West D and de Braganca F (2012) A systematic approach to eliciting and gathering the expertise of a ‘knowledge guardian’: An application of the appreciative inquiry method to the study of classical dressage. Systematic Practice Action Research 25(3): 241–260.

65.

Westbrook

Schilt

(2014) Doing gender, determining gender: Transgender people, gender panics, and the maintenance of the sex/gender/sexuality system. Gender and Society 28(1): 32–57.