Deborah Ann Butler Achieving Against The Odds Summary

Deborah Ann Butler’s “Achieving Against the Odds: Gender, Chance and Contradiction in the Horseracing Industry”, an article featured in The Sociology of Sport Journal, analyzes the gender inequality along with class and race in the horse racing industry. Butler considers the difference in difficulty between woman and men when it comes to achieving success through interviews, statistical support, and Bourdieu’s concept of “thinking tools”. When it comes to sports, men have shown more dominance in achieving success and have become the models for the industry.

In most sportsmen and woman are separated when it comes to competing. When dealing with interspecies sports like horse racing, wherein both the horses and jockeys participate, women

are more known to participate in the flat racing, seeing as it is seen as safer or more “feminine” to flat race. Men are more “capable” of jumps with the horses because it is seen and dangerous.

Butler talks of a study done in 2009 which included the British Racing School, where it is recorded that there are eight female flat jockeys compared to 109 males and in jump racing there is one professional female jockey compared to 88 male jockeys. This goes against the gender balance of trainee’s enrollment that is included in the training courses given to people who work in the racing industry. This is all associated with the male-dominant racing field dealing with inequality in class, gender, and race, which Butler explores in her article.

Butler introduces the theory that the sports industry is a social organization that promotes male dominance giving woman significant challenges to face in become successful in the horse racing industry. To understand these social practices, Butler uses Bourdieu’s concepts of capital, habitus, and field. Butler says that field acts as a system of forces arranged by gender, class, and power. This field of power is an

arrangement of economics, social society, and culture, controlling the way organization and people relate. We see this in the horse racing industry with gender. An organization treats men who aspire to be professional jockeys with equal chance but when it comes to woman it’s a joke and they could not possibly handle being a professional jockey. Butler says that embodied cultural capital is important when in the form of gender capital that is associated with habitus. Masculinized fields can be weakened and altered by embodied cultural capital in the form of female capital but that all it can do. Female capital can not over-turn power, in other words male-dominant fields cannot be made to be female-dominant. It can only help to add more woman to the field and make it equal for both men and women. Butler Bourdieu’s concept of habitus by saying that through habitus, industries is connected to field and capital. Habitus guides to a variation of practices depending on the condition of the field. Multilayered and complicated, habitus refers how feminine and masculine the body is in the horse racing field. How the body is shaped, perceived, and the body’s possibilities. Butler states,” They also throw light on the classed and gendered nature of horse racing within a patriarchal, masculine field of power and help to illustrate the obstacles women face and how, through access to particular forms of cultural, social and bodily (physical) capital, some women are able to become professional jockeys.”
One of the variables in Butlers article is a study she conducted through fixing herself in the racing world to see what challenges women went through. In this study Butler interviewed women and men working in the racing field along with training centers in the UK. She conducted participant observation by spending a whole year working as a “lad”, someone who cares for the horses in a stable, in the racing yard while recording her observations in a field diary. While using methods like snowballing Butler conducted twenty-three interviews with apprentices, twelve interviews including women who rode as jockeys or had worked in racing at some point. Since Butler had once worked in the racing field she had contacts, which allowed her to gain all this access to accomplishing the work she wanted to do. Throughout the study she became a little biased to the work of the racing industry and sometimes didn’t want to share her findings, out of fear of betraying the people she had worked with and became friends. Despite of this feeling she knew that her work would shed light on the important experiences these women were going through, like sexual harassment.
When Butler was working at the stable staff training center she met Anne, a former jockey.

Anne spoke of some of her experiences and in them most of the women included were all aspiring to be professional jockeys and illustrated how difficult it is for females to break through the gender barriers in the industry but Anne’s story was different. Anne went through situations where instead of being celebrated for any of her achievements was made a joke of and accused of not being able to actually accomplish anything so she must be sleeping with her boss. She was also given situations in which were meant to make her fail, though Anne was able to overcome these things and create something good. For example, Anne was given a horse that was known as being a little wild. No one was able to keep this horse still and she would usually tear off. Anne says,’ I started off at the back and ended up at the front, and then did a couple of circuits. Anyway I thought that was it, I’m gonna get sacked ... but anyway, Bob Henbury [the trainer] came up laughing and said “that’s the best she’s ever gone” and then every work day they used to put me on her and of course I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and I was actually trying to hold her and she was running off with me and of course she was actually doing a bit of work.” From then on Anne was the only “lad” able to handle that horse, showing her trainer just how valuable she was. Anne was eventually excepted as a woman in a “man’s” world

by challenging the norms of the industry’s stereotypes and succeeding. Anne used her characteristics of being light weight and smaller than others to become one of the most successful women jockey in a male dominated sport. Butler was able to show how anomalies are made to show the relationship between social practices and the gender based inequalities. How Anne’s features played to her advantage and maybe even made her better than the men in this field that is so against women. Butler also refers this back to habitus. She shows how Anne’s body shape and weight was able to challenge the field.
You can see as you read this article that Butler proves her hypothesis of how the racing workforce is characterized by unequal power relations by gender. She concludes that a women’s ability to race is dependent on if owners and trainers can ignore the values held by most in the industry, that women are weaker than men and should stay away from the “dangerous” sport. Butler also includes that women can actually be at an advantage with the lighter and smaller bodies but in the horse racing business this is contradictory. Jockeys, no matter what gender that are, need to have smaller bodies, yet when women are smaller they are seen as weak and unable to carry out a good performance. Though Butler refers back to Bourdieu’s concepts. While men take for granted that they can race, women need to prove that they are strong, determined and fully capable of anything thrown at them, like Anne. She not only handled everything thrown at her, she took it above and beyond.
I agree with all of the things that Butler states in her article. I cannot think of any limitations in this study. I think Butler took everyone’s opinion during the interviews and then did a participant study and saw everything first hand by experiencing it herself. My view is that when woman do something of significance and cause a needed change, they are made into jokes. People ignore the amazing accomplishments they make and focus on what they may be doing in their personal lives, watching every move they make looking for a slip up. They talk about what she may be wearing, how much makeup she has on, or how her hair may be styled. Though if a man does something just as life changing they are seen as strong and no one cares what they may be doing in their personal lives. Even if these men are doing things that are wrong most people would defend the man and say we should pay attention to their accomplishments. In Butler’s interview with Anne, Anne says,” we had lots of young lads thought then they could be jockeys if a ‘girl’ can.” Doing something “like a girl” can be an amazing thing, women are strong, independent, and fully capable of doing something bigger than themselves and be just as accomplished as a man.