Tomorrow – Friday 7th March, marks the annual return of International Women’s Day, with this year’s theme being ‘Inspire Inclusion’.
But what does that mean to us at EquiTeam?
If you want the short version – everything!
Read on for the longer non pc version..!
When we (Liz, Lou and Liz, the trio behind EquiTeam) set out to create our educational and supportive resource; inspiring, inclusion, education, welcoming and safety were all at the top of our list of core values and beliefs.
We wanted to take the buzz created from Equiteam Confidence camps online. We hoped that by doing this we could keep the inspiration and progress going in between camps, and offer support, affordable education and provide a sense of belonging to a safe community to equestrians across the UK.
A sense of belonging is a fundamental human need, but having all been involved in the industry for many years it was easy to take a step back and recognise that the equestrian world wasn’t always the nicest place
We can all recall instances of feeling alone.
When founding Equiteam it was important to us that everyone felt valued and it didn’t matter if someone’s goal was to hack, canter for the first time, or complete a BE90 – everyone is welcome.
With inclusion into a community comes a sense of belonging, something that is really important to us. A zero tolerance policy for anything other than kindness ensures that EquiTeam is a safe place for people to come together, share experiences and get advice from each other, as well as access to the additional EquiTeam training resources which we hopes continues to inspire and motivate our members.
Although we celebrate International Women’s Day and it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the inspirational women that have gone before us to change the landscape on equality and inclusion, it is important for us to remember that inclusion to EquiTeam doesn’t discriminate and also includes men.
In our experience, the industry can be just as isolating for men at grassroots level, they are massively outnumbered – just go into your local equestrian shop and look at the ratio of male/female clothing and you will see what we mean!
A lack of inclusion can have a detrimental impact on someone’s mental health. The on-going mental health statistics show that men are much less likely to ask for help and support – does this mean that it is because they always feel included and inspired? We think it is fair to assume not.
So, with history aside and looking at the current equestrian community in 2024, our question to you is: Have we come full circle where in addition to talking about how women are included in grassroots equestrianism, should we also be asking ourselves how accessible is the support for men and do they feel included in the equestrian community?
Liz, Lou and Liz x
Thank you for supporting three horse-daft women, trying to give something back to their community.
