LIFEof barbe by Jana Cohen Barbe
The Level Playing Field WHAT BUSINESS CAN LEARN FROM EQUESTRIAN SPORTS On July 18, 2015, four women represented the United States in the Nations Cup of the Mannheim CSIO. After two rounds of jumping, the United States was tied with Germany and Belgium for first place. The incomparable Beezie Madden was called upon to ride in the jump-off, and, as she has so many times before, she delivered. The United States won that day and once again equestrian sports demonstrated that women can compete with men, without gender bias, without drama, without handicaps, allowances or concessions. But equestrian sports remain the exception, one of just two Olympic sports where men and women compete against each other (the other being sailing). As such, our sport carries important lessons for intergender competition in the business world – lessons that could level the historically unbalanced playing field in more traditional workplaces. W H AT W E G E T R I G H T
Empowerment from the earliest age. In our sport, the girls
out-number the boys exponentially. The end result? Girls get used to winning, and the girls who do not win, grow accustomed to seeing other girls win. It is a sport where, at the earliest ages, girls dominate and there is no self-doubt based on gender. There may be self-doubt and insecurity about the quality of riding or the caliber of pony, but I suspect that if we asked a young girl at pony finals whether she can compete against the boys, our question would be met with giggles over its silliness. The positive effects of this accumulate and even mature over time, and are ultimately illustrated by women in our sport demonstrating a high degree of confidence and self-reliance. Women in our sport do not hesitate to accept new challenges because they are empowered by a lifetime of success.
Equal Treatment. The rules are the same in our sport for boys
and girls, and for men and women. We do not create structural allowances or concessions based on the assumption that females require different or lesser standards of performance, and we do not then foster the messages of inequality inherent in the creation of different performance standards for boys and girls or for men and women. The time allowed is the time allowed regardless of gender. Our sport values and rewards skill, knowledge, judgment,
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physicality, fitness, stamina, consistency and courage. These are all gender-neutral attributes. Ours is not a sport of brute-strength. Separate rules or facilities are not required when these attributes are abundant in all of our athletes – men and women.
Role Models. Our sport is filled with extraordinary women at
every level of nearly every equestrian discipline. We have women instructors, women trainers, women barn managers, women grooms, women show managers, women professional riders, women judges and women Olympians. For young girls who grow up in this sport, there is no shortage of women to admire and emulate, and no perceived limitations attributable to gender.
Our Partners Have Four Legs and No Biases. Horses are at
once very simple and very complicated animals. They can have very strong opinions and very well defined preferences (mine, for instance, would prefer I stop randomly pulling on the left rein), but I have yet to meet a horse with a gender bias. A superb rider is a superb rider, and the horse will respond accordingly, regardless of gender. There is also the thrill, the joy and the love of riding, and the unquantifiable impact that has on a girl’s or a woman’s spirit. I know of no more empowering feeling than that sense of flying on horseback. I can only speak for myself, but I cannot measure the impact riding has had on my psyche, on my confidence and on my well being; and all of that matters immeasurably in the quest for equality.
Men Play an Important Role. Just as the women in our sport
grow up believing in and trusting their own abilities, the men in our sport grow up believing in and trusting the women around them. Maybe it is the women trainers they had when they were young, or maybe it is the young women friends they faced in jump-offs time and time again as a junior rider, but when they come to be adults in our sport, the men simply demonstrate a lack of gender bias that is almost unmatched in any other environment. Has any one of us heard a man complain, after a major competition, that he “lost to a woman?” He may be angry with himself for the mistakes he made on course, he may be angry with the course designer, he may be angry with the judges, but does he think any less of himself because he lost to a woman? No, not in our sport, and that, sadly, is all too rare in our world.