Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to analyse changing gender and social class patterns in equestrian sports in Sweden and Great Britain during the twentieth century. One hundred years ago, equestrian sports were strongly connected to men and masculinity. Men worked together with and used horses in agriculture, forestry, in the transport sector and in the army. A real man was a ‘horse man’. In Sweden horse riding was connected to the army and to the upper class. In today’s Sweden equestrianism is strongly connected to women, girls and femininity on all levels. Furthermore, the contemporary equestrian sector is of great economic importance to the Swedish economy, and horse riding is popular and not only restricted to members of the upper class. Less is known about the development in Great Britain, despite the fact that Great Britain has since long been seen as a very important place for the development of equestrian sports. In order to understand the process of changing gender codes and the growth of the sector in Sweden and to explore and understand the development in Great Britain in the twentieth century, this chapter examines articles on the equestrian competitions of the Olympic Games in 1912, 1948, 1952, 1956 and 1964 in Swedish and British magazines.
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Notes
- 1.
Maybe even more so in Sweden than in Britain. In Sweden, the majority of members in the National Equestrian Federation are women (even at an elite level); a majority in horse racing are women, whereas in harness racing, a majority are men. However, when it comes to stable work, a majority in harness racing are women.
- 2.
There is a similar magazine in Sweden called Hästen (The Horse). This magazine has been published since 1920 and has been studied from 1920 up to the 1970s in order to compare the Swedish case with the British when it came to stable work. However, very little is said in this magazine on grooming. Furthermore, it has not been possible to analyse adverts on “position vacant or wanted” or letters to the editor as these are too few.
- 3.
The fact that the number of articles increased over time is not easy to explain. It may have to do with how stable work was seen within the trade union. It is pointed out in the early articles that people in general probably did not realise that grooms were organised within the trade union.
- 4.
(Swedish titles translated to English)
References
Sources
Dagens Nyheter
Lantarbetaren
Trav- och galoppronden
Horse & Hound
Equestrian Statistics. (2011, February 16). Resource document. https://www.bhs.org.uk/About_Us/Equestrian_Statistics.aspx2011-03-20. 2 May 2011.
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Hedenborg, S., White, M.H. (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, M., Knijnik, J. (eds) Gender and Equestrian Sport. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6824-6_2
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