Not a job for ‘girly-girls’: horseracing, gender and work identities

Women began to work in the British horseracing industry in the late 1960s, early 1970s. In order to be accepted they had to be as strong, tough and able as the ‘lads’. Drawing upon historical accounts and an ethnographic study of work relations in British horseracing, including semi-structured interviews with female stable ‘lads’, this paper analyzes how class and gender shape the way these women negotiate masculinity. Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and field provide the tools to help explore the masculine work identities that are embodied by those working in the racing industry, and whether women working in the racing industry can in any sense be regarded as embodying masculinity in a ‘field’ of power that can be characterized as patriarchal and masculinized.