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)
“Captain, down where I come from we dearly love our whiskey, but we don’t drink with a man unless we respect him.”
—James Poe, U.S. screenwriter, and Based On Play. Robert Aldrich. Sergeant Tolliver (Buddy Ebsen)
“Most women of [the WW II] generation have but one image of good motherhood—the one their mothers embodied. . . . Anything done “for the sake of the children” justified, even ennobled the mother’s role. Motherhood was tantamount to martyrdom during that unique era when children were gods. Those who appeared to put their own needs first were castigated and shunned—the ultimate damnation for a gender trained to be wholly dependent on the acceptance and praise of others.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)