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Women Power in Equine Industry: Stories of Arkansas’s ladies
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“The reason we show horses is because we love them. We love the people we get to be around, and we love the competition”. This is what Shelby Layne Ridgway told me when I wanted to know more about her family’s passion for horses.
Shelby has been showing quarter horses since before she “could walk”, and this is logical as Shelby, her mother (Andi Beaty Ridgway) and her grandmother (Jerry Beaty) have been strongly involved in the Arkansas Quarter Horse Association (ArQHA) for years now.
The ArQHA is an affiliate of the American Quarter Horse Association, located in Amarillo, Texas. ArQHA's purpose is to stimulate and regulate matters pertaining to the history, breeding, exhibition, publicity, sale, racing or improvements of the Quarter Horse.
Women Power. Two words give me power (it is crystal clear why as I am a woman!), as millions of women wake up daily to do their best to leave a unique mark in this world. IT is said, “The woman is half the society and the one who educates the other half!”.
Combine equines and women's power and you can find many stories about women who were raised in equine farms in the United States of America and decided to devote their lives to translate their passion about horses into real marks in the equine industry.
As a youth exhibitor (18 years old and under), Shelby served several years on the (ArQHYA) board, including as Vice President in her last year in youth. Shelby also served as a national director for the American Quarter Horse Youth Association and assisted at the AQHA Youth World Show which hosts all 50 states and several countries every year.
Shelby knows the importance of social media and the role it can play to enhance the equine industry. So, she established the ArQHYA and ArQHA social media accounts in 2013 and has been in charge of them since. She and her mother co-run the ArQHA website (arkansasquarterhorse.com).
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Shelby with her mother after Shelby won the Blind Horsemanship Challenge.
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Moreover, she owns Shelby Layne Photography and utilizes her media knowledge through taking candid photos at events and writing articles after shows for local and national publications, such as the Horsemen's Roundup magazine, which is published in Arkansas.
This magazine has a female footprint too, as Phyllis Wooten Ormsby, another Arkansas woman is the publisher of it! (Arkansas’s women’s passion for equines amazes me!)
It is all started in 1979 when Ormsby answered a classified ad for a fast typist at the newspaper in the capitol city near where she grew up in Alabama. Ormsby ended up working part-time in the sports department answering the phones and typing up the results from high school football games all over the state.
“I fell in love with journalism and went back to college to get my degree, and that’s how it all started,” Ormsby says. Journalism’s love opened many doors for Ormsby as she worked in lots of different positions in newspapers in Mississippi and later, Arkansas.
She deserves this as she is truly a hard-working woman and this can be seen throughout her entire career as she has been an advertising salesman, a news reporter, a lifestyle editor, an advertising department manager, and a publisher.
In 2004, Ormsby was working at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, however, she took a huge decision changed her life: buy the Horsemen’s Roundup magazine and left her job to work for herself.
Why a horse magazine? She explains to me “It’s the perfect combination of two of the things I love most - writing and horses.”
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Ormsby does not think women in her profession have a hard time being publishers. She believes being female was not much of a barrier to her career either in the corporate world or now that she works for herself. She adds “Your real barriers are what is between your own two ears. If you think you can do something, you will. If you think you can’t do something, you probably won’t.”
Shelby, her mother, and grandmother are an example of this! Three female generations from the same family put their marks in ArQHA. This family has been involved in ArQHA since Shelby’s mother was a child. The mother Andi has served on the ArQHA board since Shelby was young and now Andi is the First Vice President.
The grandmother Jerry has been the association secretary and treasurer for over 15 years, and she has also been the show secretary for years. She is in charge of facility and judges’ contracts, scheduling flights and rooms for show staff and judges, creating the show in the horse show program that runs entries and results, and so much more.
Shelby’s family’s role in this industry is huge and it includes her father too, as her parents with her run the show office at every show and take entries, figure results, and answer any question that comes our way. Shelby and her mother figure members' points at the end of each show for our year-end awards. Shelby has been in charge of selecting and ordering their year-end awards every year which has about a $10,000 budget.
Her role in the association is tedious, however, Shelby says: “Since my family has always been heavily involved in running the association, not just showing in it, it was natural for me to step in and help. It is something that we do together and get to enjoy together while showing our horses.”
Still, Shelby thinks that the equine industry tends to have “a lot of females showing as amateurs and a lot of males as professionals which tends to slant towards males running associations and making decisions.”
However, she is 100% that the ArQHA has a lot of respect for her mother and especially her grandmother, explaining, “they both have strong voices and say in what happens in the association. That respect has been gained through many years of making good decisions and getting the job done right.”
Listening is the secret behind these two women’s success. Shelby adds that they listen to what exhibitors want and need and try to find ways of giving that to them. “Since my mother and I are also exhibitors, we are not out of touch with what is happening in the show pen to exhibitors and we get to hear to many voices”, Shelby says.
“To keep a successful association, one must continue to listen to the desires of its exhibitors, because without them, there is no horse show”, Shelby adds.
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Deadlines are one of the stressful things in working in journalism, and while Ormsby does not remember a hard decision she had to take for the sake of the magazine, she says: “when you do this kind of work, there are things that have to get done in a timely fashion. It doesn’t matter how you feel, or what the weather is like, or what you have planned. You have to be willing to do what needs to be done.”
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Balancing between work and life responsibilities is Ormsby's biggest problem, as her office is in her home “so I’m never away from the office.” She explains she tries to have days off where she doesn’t think about the magazine but in reality “if I am not actively working on the magazine, I am thinking about it. It’s difficult to have a balance.”
However, she believes that planning, good money management practices, good time management practices, keeping up with trends and technology, learning to be a jack of all trades are all the successful magazine publisher. She advices the next generation of the female publishers to find someone who is doing what you want to do, and doing it well, and learn from them.
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Phyllis Wooten Ormsby
"Other than having my children, it’s been the greatest thing in my life”, Ormsby finishes her talk with me showing her gratitude for having to be the publisher of Horsemen’s Roundup magazine for the last 16 years.
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There are about 7.2 million horses in the U.S. identified by the American Horse Council (AHC) in 2017. An elaborate report was produced in 2019 comparing the state of the equine industry between 2005 and 2018 found that the largest numbers of horse owners are from age groups 25-59.
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It seems that women have unique marks in the equine industry. These two stories are just an example of women’s role in the life of these peaceful creatures. Still, I believe if we dug more, we will find dozens of interesting stories.
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Sources:
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* https://arkansasquarterhorse.com
* https://equimanagement.com/articles/trends-in-the-equine-industry
