This is a thought provoking article about sexual harassment in horse racing by Natalie Voss.
Spoiler alert: it’s no different than anywhere else, and perhaps worse.
LaurieB, thanks for the link. Interesting read and, at least for me, interesting to see the different sides of any potential fallout if someone “outs” a big name trainer or owner given how the industry itself is structured.
I don’t think any industry/business is immune from this type of behavior and I suspect we have a long way to go before the thought of harassing someone else in a “sexual” nature (spanning the entire gamut) is completely gone. Hopefully the outing of highly visible people in other industries at least give horsemen (gender neutral 
) pause before they continue on their harassing ways.
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Racing has always been steeped in tradition, for both good and bad. So it’s not surprising that it’s been slow to embrace gender equality.
I was 18 when I took my first job at at a busy training center. The woman who hooked me up with my job was a friend of a friend, and did something which I was insulted by at the time, but have been eternally grateful for in hindsight.
She basically told me who I was and wasn’t allowed to talk to or interact with. “You’re not allowed to go to this barn, you can’t take a job at that barn, don’t even speak to him, but you CAN go over to this barn.” At the time, I thought she was “babying” me or saying I wasn’t good enough, and it made me resentful. It wasn’t until MUCH later that I realized she was keeping me safe from dangerous and/or abusive situations. I have been so lucky in my life that I haven’t been subjected to such behavior in the workplace on any serious level, and it was partly because of people like her.
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