Exclusion Based On Gender
Golf, like the majority of sports, was once male dominated. Therefore, keeping with the confines of social class, women were generally excluded from the course and clubhouse.
There is a very apparent gender aspect to social capital. This is promoted by country clubs and puts women at a disadvantage. The exclusion of women prevent them from attaining the high-class social identity created by country club membership, nor do they have access to make business connections that so often present themselves on the green. This prevents the success of women in the social and business world and further perpetuates the phenomenon of the glass ceiling. Women were considered to be slower and weaker and the direct cause of athletic delays. Men often criticized that sport was far too demanding for women and that they should have their own institutions. Competitive females contested this segregation and despite earning acceptance on the course from their ability and talent, they continued to be exiled from the masculine sanctum of the clubhouse. Women, like racial-minorities, were limited to specified and restricted times in which the facility was made available to them. This often resulted in females being unable to play during the weekends. Furthermore women did not have a voice pertaining to club affairs. Therefore, although “ladies golf” developed, it was never wholly independent from men. Although the number of independent female members (not associated with a family membership or their husband’s membership) began to increase over time, it was always regulated, preventing the deterioration of male middle-class dominance. Increased fees, such as the $250 tournament entrance fee for women entering the Charlottetown Charity Golf Tourney, regulated female population. Furthermore, reducing women’s playing time regulated the presence of women and insured a male-dominated environment.
Although exclusion based on gender is becoming less common, the women that are gaining access are predominantly white and middle-class. Therefore, although gender equality is now a social norm, it is among women with a certain socioeconomic class, further perpetuation class exclusion.
Read more about this topic: Country Club
Famous quotes containing the words exclusion, based and/or gender:
“We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You know, there’s a cowboy movie where one joker says, “Mighty quiet out there. Too quiet,” he says. Same thing every time; it’s too quiet.”
—James Poe, U.S. screenwriter, and Based On Play. Robert Aldrich. Sergeant Costa (Jack Palance)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)