Racing Home

Racing Home

The Racing Home project has, as its core objective, the enhancement of the working lives of parents and carers in the horseracing industry. It seeks to ensure that all employees understand their basic rights and entitlements and can talk openly about the challenges they experience as a working mother, father, or carer.

Rather than a taboo subject, their needs can be embraced inclusively by racing’s employers who will see the benefits of investing in the quality of life of parents, both in terms of retention, a more motivated workforce and overall sustainability.

Education is a sizable part of Racing Home and by leading the way through signposting and highlighting good working practices around parenthood, Women in Racing will help make racing more accessible and enjoyable for our participants.

This will play a part in transforming a more traditional culture and mindset, thus attracting people from outside the sport to join racing.

The Beginnings

The ’Racing Home’ project began with a symposium in November 2019 and was followed up by a series of successful workshops and webinars leading to a research-based project led by Dr. Kate Clayton-Hathway of the Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice, Oxford Brookes University. The discussions with participants from all aspects of horseracing were used as a basis to collate data around the experiences of motherhood and parenting.  This expanded to include the views of a wide range of stakeholders.

Participants were asked to suggest any solutions they felt would contribute to mitigating both practical barriers for working mothers as well as less tangible ones within our sport. These findings were collated and developed into a series of recommended ‘next steps’ for the industry in discussion with key stakeholders.

The findings formed the report ‘Racing Home, Working Mothers in the Horseracing Industry’ which was published late last year.