Women, men and horses : looking at the equestrian world through a “gender lens”

Perhaps almost as much a part of world literature as romantic references to a man and his horse (the warrior, cowboy, or gaucho and his faithful mount) are the numerous existing narratives on women and horses, from age-old mythology to contemporary popular fiction. This chapter provides a survey and summary of literature produced from social science perspectives, works that attempt to move beyond common sense notions to capture historical dynamics and current renegotiations of gender relations within the equestrian world today. We draw attention to an emerging literature and growing wealth of empirical work that, from diverse standpoints – from recent sociology and feminist sport studies to contemporary “deconstructionist” perspectives – examines women’s and men’s experiences in equestrian sports and practice. We also present a brief sketch of the diverse chapters that follow: studies carried out in a variety of cultural contexts in which equestrian activities and communities contribute to (de) constructions of embodied “femininities” and “masculinities” and in which gendered equestrian relations are uniquely configured through intersection with other axes of social stratification (class, race, sexuality, generation, etc.).