Evening Talk - Riding to Freedom: Women Equestrians and Artists at the Russell-Cotes

Talk – Riding to Freedom: Women Equestrians and Artists at the Russell-Cotes

The First World War is often credited with catalysing new opportunities for women’s liberation. However, looking through the lens of horse sport, women in Britain had achieved significant advancement before the war even began. By the turn of the twentieth century, British women began to reject the sidesaddle – which they been riding in for almost half a millennium – to ride astride like men – very literally, “wearing the breeches.” These elegant equestrians transformed sport and society in the pre-1914 era and thus enabled women to so efficiently aid the war effort after 1914. This involvement had far-reaching consequences: Today equestrianism is one of the few sports – and the only Olympic discipline – where men and women compete against each other on equal terms. Most sports separate the sexes in competition, but for riding it has been the other way around, and this gender equality traces its roots to the momentous shifts in women’s riding at the turn of the century.

Join Dr Erica Munkwitz, historian of modern British history focusing on gender and equestrian sports, for a talk to explore the development of women equestrians through the lens of artwork in the Russell-Cotes collection.