The Pony Club is fully committed to the principles and practice of equality of opportunity for all and ensuring that equestrianism sport and learning is accessible to everyone.
In The Pony Club Strategy 2021-2025, we have outlined that we seek to promote inclusion, equality and diversity amongst members, volunteers, and staff. Aiming to recruit, engage and retain irrespective of age, race, disability – including both visible and non-visible, neurodiversity, sexual orientation, how they identify, underserved socio-economic position or religion.
The Pony Club endorses the principle of sports equality and strives to ensure that everyone who wishes to be involved in Pony Club Sport and Activities, whether as participants, team members, spectators, volunteers, coaches or staff:
The full Equality and Diversity Policy can be viewed and downloaded via the link here.
As a key Member Body of British Equestrian (BEF), we work closely with BEF to promote and deliver equal opportunities to anyone who wishes to be involved with equestrian activity.
For more information on BEF work towards a more equal and diverse equestrian sport click on the link button below, including more information on their ‘Protected Characteristics’.
The below provides an overview of the Protected Characteristics proposed by British Equestrian. More information on these can be found through the link above.
Equestrian sport is one that people can be involved in irrespective of age. Our Member Bodies have individual participants from the ages of under 5 to over 100. Equestrian sport has many top level athletes competing across a wide age range – from Nick Skelton (oldest Olympic gold medallist for over a century at Rio 2016 at the age of 58) and para dressage rider Izzy Palmer (currently the youngest rider on the World Class Programme, having joined the programme aged 14).
Equestrian sport is the only sport where men and women compete on equal terms, with equal prize money and access to all competitions. In terms of participants, equestrian sport is one of the few sports where the majority of participants are female (67% according to the BETA National Equestrian Survey 2019) and 90% of coaches are female (British Equestrian Coaching Survey 2019). Where most of teams at major competitions and championships are mixed.
Because equestrian sport isn’t gender segregated, there is no requirement to identify or test for a specific gender for competition at any level. This makes the competition environment particularly inclusive for transgender athletes.
Equestrian sport has an incredibly strong record in relation to disability participation and talent, with over 24% of our participants having a disability. Many of our elite para equestrian athletes started riding with Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA), which currently has over 27,000 participants. Internationally, Great Britain’s para dressage team is undefeated at the Paralympic Games.
It has been noted by Dashper, 2012 in the journal Sociology that equestrian sport is ‘shown to offer an unusually tolerant environment for gay men in which heterosexual men of all ages demonstrate low levels of homophobia.’[1]
There are also some high-profile equestrians who are openly gay, including Sir Lee Pearson, and both Carl Hester and Spencer Wilton, who competed in the dressage team at Rio 2016 are openly gay. In 2019, 14% of the team that support our World Class athletes identified as LGBT+, significantly above the national average.
There are many riders who are married, in civil-partnerships or single at all levels of the sport, from recreational riders through grassroots to elite level. The demographics of British Equestrian in 2016, including consultants, showed a diversity of marital status with 53% married, 40% not married or not in a civil partnership, 5% in a civil partnership and 2% did not answer the question.
Ros Canter was competing internationally in September 2019 after giving birth to her first daughter, Ziggy Grace, in early July. Zara Phillips competed at the FEI World Equestrian Games in Normandy (2014) seven months after giving birth to her daughter, Mia. From a grassroots perspective, there are a number of riding schools that provide a crèche facility to support mothers.
British Equestrian has worked with a number of groups to promote inclusion in equestrian sport, including St James’ City Farm in Gloucester and the Urban Equestrian Academy in Leicester. We have supported and part-funded the work of Ebony Horse Club in Brixton, and continue to support them via their Young Equestrians club.
We are aware that racial diversity is not an area where equestrian sport is strong and there is more work we can do in this area, which we are developing through our work towards the Advanced Equality Standard. We’re aware that if we look at riding centre location, over 96% of centres are located in areas with lower than average ethnic diversity.
British Equestrian has linked up the Al Buraq riding club in London, alongside London Sport and Sporting Equals, in order to provide additional support and access to funding opportunities. Al Buraq is a women-only riding club run for women who prefer to ride not in the presence of men, or who do this due to religious reasons.