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The Next Hurdle – Female jockeys, Motherhood and the Horse Racing Industry

Researchers

Dr Ciara Losty, Department of Sport and Exercise Science. 

Challenge:

Women account for only 35% of the participants in sport science research (Smith et al. 2022) and only 16% of that research is exclusively female based. Only 11% of all jockey licenses are held by female jockeys in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Female jockeys are operating in an extreme minority. Despite policy changes allowing women to ride and train alongside men, gender stereotypes and structural inequalities persist within the horseracing industry. Female jockeys are less likely to get opportunities, support, or recognition than their male counterparts, and societal pressures can make motherhood seem incompatible with their careers. Having a child while being a jockey is often a topic which is avoided in horse racing or viewed as a ‘feminine’ issue. Support for females’ jockeys in horse racing lags behind.

Impact Summary:

Losty and Sreenivas's (2025) research, The Next Hurdle: Female Jockeys, Motherhood and the Horse Racing Industry, provides one of the first focused qualitative accounts of how female jockeys in Ireland and the UK understand the possibility of combining motherhood with a professional racing career. The study highlights a critical need for inclusive policies supporting female jockeys through pregnancy and motherhood, such as jockey-centred maternity leave, flexible working, and role models in leadership, to help retain talented women and challenge industry norms. Without such changes, the sport risks losing experienced jockeys and discouraging future generations from pursuing racing careers. The findings paint a portrait of an industry where gender parity exists on paper but not in practice, and where success for female jockeys often comes at the cost of postponing or abandoning motherhood. This novel research has had an awareness-raising, agenda-setting effect: a testimonial from Horse Racing Ireland confirms it is informing a Health and Wellbeing Framework currently in development, and it has contributed to a broader sector conversation. 

“Dr Ciara Losty’s research and the findings.. have provided valuable evidence to inform the development of our Health & Wellbeing Framework for the thoroughbred Industry. The research has helped shape policy discussions around supporting women through pregnancy, maternity leave, and their return to work, while highlighting the importance of inclusive wellbeing practices across the industry. It is also informing future initiatives, guidance, and support services, and has identified key areas for ongoing research to ensure the industry’s best policies and practices continue to evolve in response to the needs of female participants”

Stacey McDonnell, Industry Health & Wellbeing Lead, Horse Racing Ireland.

The research programme developed from Dr Losty's applied practice with jockeys, and from her involvement in the Jockeys Pathway and with Horse Racing Ireland, in the dual capacity of service provider and researcher. Through this work, she became increasingly aware of the unique challenges experienced by women participating in a traditionally male-dominated sporting environment. In particular, applied practice highlighted issues relating to pregnancy, maternity leave, return to riding, access to appropriate support, career progression, and the broader health and wellbeing needs of female jockeys. The programme adopted an engaged and collaborative approach, ensuring that the research questions were grounded in issues identified through practice and that the findings could be translated into practical recommendations for industry stakeholders.

Losty and Sreenivas's 2025 publication, The next hurdle - Female jockeys, motherhood and the horse racing industry, provides one of the first focused qualitative accounts of how female jockeys in Ireland and the UK understand the possibility of combining motherhood with a professional racing career. Engagement with Horse Racing Ireland (HRI), the governing body for Irish horseracing, in the lead-up and throughout the study was central to increasing awareness of the unique barriers encountered by female jockeys, including the interaction between motherhood and career sustainability. This engagement has informed the ongoing development of welfare frameworks and policy within the industry, signifying a shift from treating motherhood as a private career obstacle to recognising it as an industry inclusion, welfare and retention issue. This is the central change the research has helped drive.

Following publication, the research was featured nationally in the Irish Independent, under the headline Most female jockeys feel they would have to leave the sport if they became pregnant, bringing the findings to a broad public audience and signalling a shift in how pregnancy, motherhood and return-to-riding are being discussed across the sport. Similarly, in November 2025, Equitas, a leading platform for women in equestrian sport published a dedicated long-form feature on the research. Key themes covered included the treatment of pregnancy as equivalent to injury; the absence of maternity policy or return-to-work pathways in Irish and UK racing; an industry culture described as operating under an old-school mindset where parenting is unsupported; and the near-total silence around motherhood as a legitimate professional issue. The feature described the research as ground-breaking and concluded with a call to the industry to act on its findings.

The HerForm Programme

In April 2026 the HerForm programme was launched, a cross-border initiative between the Jockeys Education & Training Scheme (JETS) and HRI Equuip (Horse Racing Ireland's education and training division), stakeholders heard the academic evidence alongside an emerging practical precedent. This sequencing gave policymakers both a rationale and a reference point for building something more structural within the Irish racing context. Dr Losty contributed directly to the translation of research into practice through her involvement in the HerForm programme, including the delivery of modules to programme participants, covering themes such as concept of self, success, self-esteem, personal development, identity, dreams and perfectionism. Female jockeys based in Ireland and the UK completed the module and engaged in live workshops with Dr Losty, co-facilitated by HRI Equuip and JETS UK. These online workshops provided an opportunity to bring the findings and implications of the research directly into an applied educational and support setting, ensuring that participants and industry stakeholders could engage with evidence-informed approaches to health, wellbeing and career development.

Engagement and Next Steps 

In May 2026, Dr Losty and Dr Sreenivas's research was presented to five key stakeholders: HRI, the Irish Stable Staff Association (ISSA), the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders Association (ITBA), Irish Injured Jockeys (IIJ), and the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB). These bodies collectively represent the full governance, welfare, employment and regulatory ecosystem of Irish horseracing. HRI sets strategic direction and funding; ISSA represents a largely female stable workforce; ITBA speaks for breeders and employers; IIJ supports jockeys through injury and career disruption, the circumstance participants directly compared to pregnancy; and IHRB holds regulatory authority over licensing and professional standards. Bringing all five to the same table signalled that the gaps identified (no dedicated maternity policy, no formalised return-to-riding pathway, and no pregnancy-specific sport-science guidance) would require a coordinated, whole-of-industry response. It created the conditions for collective commitment rather than individual inaction. A co-funded PhD between SETU and HRI is currently under negotiation, with the proposed research focused on sport-science and evidence-based return-to-riding protocols following pregnancy.

Losty and Sreenivas’s 2025 research outlines barriers directly identified by female jockeys: injury risk, loss of rides, lack of maternity pathways, limited sport-science guidance, and few visible role models. The study was published in Acta Psychologica and examined an under-researched issue within both sport psychology and horseracing: the career, welfare and identity challenges faced by jockeys who either have children or are contemplating pregnancy and parenthood.

The novelty of the research lies in its specific focus on female jockeys as athlete-workers in a high-risk, male-dominated and performance-dependent industry, which has never been done in Ireland or the UK before. Previous research had examined motherhood in elite sport more generally, or women’s representation in racing, but the paper addressed a distinctive gap: how motherhood is perceived by women whose work depends on physical risk, weight management, reputation, riding opportunities and continual visibility to trainers and owners. By centring the voices of jockeys themselves, the research moved beyond general assumptions about women in sport and produced evidence grounded in the lived realities of racing.

Methodologically, the study used a constructivist-interpretivist approach. Losty and Sreenivas conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 female jockeys from Ireland and the UK and analysed the data using reflexive thematic analysis. This approach was important because the challenge was not simply whether maternity policies existed, but how female jockeys experienced the culture, risks and expectations surrounding motherhood. The research therefore captured the meanings female jockeys attached to pregnancy, career breaks, injury, identity and future employability.

The study directly addresses the challenge described above by showing why motherhood support cannot be treated as a marginal or individual issue. Participants described racing and motherhood as difficult to reconcile because professional success depends on sustained momentum, availability and trust from industry stakeholders. Pregnancy or maternity leave was perceived as a potential interruption that could damage a jockey’s ability to secure future rides. Some participants felt that becoming pregnant would effectively mean leaving racing prematurely. This finding demonstrated a serious retention and inclusion risk for the industry.

Three key themes drove the research’s contribution to impact. The first, “Racing and motherhood”, showed that jockeys often saw motherhood as incompatible with racing’s high-performance demands. The second, “Injury and motherhood”, revealed that participants compared maternity leave to being out through injury: both involved absence, physical recovery and uncertainty about regaining opportunities. However, motherhood carried additional social and practical pressures that were not adequately recognised. The third theme, “Lacking role models”, showed that the absence of visible mothers competing successfully as jockeys limited what younger women could imagine for their own careers.

These findings contributed to impact by providing evidence that female jockeys need more than informal goodwill. The research highlighted the need for robust policies, sport-science guidance, maternity and return-to-riding protocols, and more nuanced psychological and welfare provision. Its contribution was therefore both evidential and agenda-setting: it translated personal experiences into a clear case for policy, education and cultural change in horseracing. By documenting female jockey-specific barriers, the study helped explain why industry initiatives around motherhood, welfare and parental support are necessary for retaining women, improving equality and sustaining the racing workforce.

Impact Evidence

Dr Shubha Sreenivas, Wrexham University, Wales.

Supported by Horse Racing Ireland and Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board

SETU Funded

2 Blocks of Sustainability Goals
This research contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 8 and 10.