Exceptional horsewomen: navigating the Moroccan equestrian sport of tbourida

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the traditional equestrian sport of tbourida (also known as fantasia) to provide insight into the power and politics that drive tbourida as a sport and demonstrate how exceptional women navigate and assert themselves in this male-dominated equestrian practice. Since 2004, women began riding more frequently in tbourida with their numbers growing in the past sixteen years. The relationship between the emergence of women’s activism followed by women’s rights through the revision of the Mudawwana has influenced women’s participation in sports and helped to define the strategies available to sustain women troupes in tbourida. I examine the implications of tbourida-as-patrimony on the inclusion of women in the sport and finally, conclude by examining five strategies (merging athletics and Islam, gender segregation, adhering to a strict dress code, garnering familial support, and having active lifestyles outside of tbourida) that female riders use to navigate the male sphere of tbourida. Women use what Judith Butler calls appearance of substance by riding in tbourida. Appearances of substance are part of a feminist phenomenological approach that are constructed identities and performative accomplishments that are repeated and constitutes gender identity as an illusion. Thus, the women become the allowed exceptions in this sport. The techniques they use permit the women riders to navigate and hybridise the space for them to become visible exceptions in the male-dominated sport of tbourida.