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:
“All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. The condition of our incarnation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the exclusion of the law of the universal being.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Our children evaluate themselves based on the opinions we have of them. When we use harsh words, biting comments, and a sarcastic tone of voice, we plant the seeds of self-doubt in their developing minds.... Children who receive a steady diet of these types of messages end up feeling powerless, inadequate, and unimportant. They start to believe that they are bad, and that they can never do enough.”
—Stephanie Martson (20th century)
“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)