Mentors for Mums: A Blueprint for Bold, Human-Centred Change in Racing
When Women in Racing (WiR) and the Racing Home project announced the launch of Mentors for Mums (M4M), they weren’t just expanding a support system - they were issuing a quiet but powerful challenge to an entire industry: if motherhood is part of life, why is it still treated as a career disruption in racing?
M4M is more than a mentoring programme. It’s a lifeline. It’s a mirror held up to the cultural and operational blind spots that can be seen across global racing systems - where the demands of caregiving can still rarely align with the realities of career progression. And it’s a call to every other equestrian sector: this is how you build a system that works for women.
Breaking the Binary: Parent or Professional?
The horseracing world is fast-paced, physically demanding, and logistically relentless. Unsociable hours, live animals, rural isolation, and economic volatility—this is not a gentle career to “pause” or casually return to. And for years, women who became parents while building a career in racing have faced barriers that could see them pushed to the margins, quietly exiting roles they once thrived in.
Enter Mentors for Mums.
Launched in May 2025, M4M is a dedicated extension of WiR’s proven mentoring programme—offered free of charge, and structured specifically to support women balancing motherhood with careers in racing. Participants are matched with mentors who understand the industry inside-out and have lived experience navigating its unique challenges. These are not one-off chats or vague coaching sessions. This is structured, trauma-aware, practical support grounded in empathy and industry insight.
It’s a redefinition of mentorship—not as a luxury, but as essential career infrastructure.
Built to Last, Not to Perform
Too often, initiatives for working parents in, what can be seen as a male-dominated industry, are rolled out with performative polish and little follow-through. Not here. M4M is backed by training, infrastructure, and intentionality. It’s part of the wider Racing Home campaign, which since its 2021 launch has become one of the most progressive forces in British equine sport.
Backed by the Racing Foundation, delivered by Women in Racing in partnership with Simply Racing, Racing Home combines policy influence with grassroots tools. From their Maternity & Paternity Toolkit to a deeply researched White Paper, this isn’t just support—it’s systemic strategy.
And M4M is the next layer of that strategy: to ensure the women already in the sport stay in the sport, not by toughing it out, but by being genuinely supported.
What the Wider Industry Must Learn
This is where the ripple effect comes in.
It’s time other corners of the equestrian industry—from eventing to dressage, polo to showing—ask the same hard questions. Where are the structured supports for caregiving professionals? Where is the career continuity for riders, grooms, officials, or vets returning from parental leave?
It’s not just about childbearing. It’s about care. Who is supported when caring for ageing parents? For disabled partners? For themselves?
The WiR and Racing Home teams didn’t wait for the perfect moment or permission. They took the data, the stories, the lived experience, and they built the thing. With integrity. With inclusion. With precision.
And they’ve laid down a blueprint the entire sport can follow.
A Culture of Belonging, Not Just Access
M4M signals a shift in industry mindset: from ‘accommodation’ to integration. Rather than framing motherhood as a hurdle to be awkwardly navigated, it centres lived experience as valid expertise. It dignifies the full identity of women in racing—not just their titles, but their timelines, their transitions, and their truths.
Mentors aren’t asked to fix or rescue. They’re there to walk alongside. To listen. To reflect. To remind mentees: You belong here. Even now. Especially now.
That shift—from access to belonging—is what defines emotionally intelligent change.
Equitas: Holding the Line
At Equitas, we don’t just report on reform—we amplify it. We care about justice in real time, not just when it trends. And this is a moment worth marking. Because Mentors for Mums isn’t soft policy. It’s smart policy. And it demands replication.
To those in governance, training, and administration across the horse world: this is your invitation to get honest about the gaps in your system. To do more than issue statements about inclusion—and start building structures that keep your people, especially your women, safe, supported, and seen.
M4M doesn’t pretend to fix everything. But it fixes something. And in an industry where tradition too often trumps transformation, that is revolutionary.
Let’s not wait for another generation to do what this one is already proving is possible.
