Epilogue: A Research Agenda for Putting Gender Through Its Paces

The contributions to this volume have shown that within the context of equestrian sport, women and men find and deliberately locate themselves in positions from which gender is renegotiable. Be they male or female, polo player, fiction reader or bullfighter, riders contribute to and experience gender through their resources and personal desires and skills - regardless of how differentially these may be allocated. Sometimes, equestrian sports facilitate expressions of normative masculinity and femininity which reinforce tradition or the status quo. At other times, equestrianism facilitates open defiance of cultural norms and social legacies of inequality. Gender always matters. However, in what ways do interactions with horses and within the institutional, social and cultural context of the equestrian world affect how it matters? In this epilogue, we draw from the preceding chapters to suggest ten salient areas for further research that are required to deepen and broaden our understanding of gender and equestrian sport.