This week has seen the passing of another International Women’s Day and no matter what profession or branch you work in, the issues faced by, caused by and solved by women come bubbling up to the surface. Golf is no exception and, as we know, the majority of women’s sports face the same dilemmas with sponsoring, air-time, sexism and moans from many [men] that we’ve not got the strength and prowess to be able to earn the big bucks.
Now I’m not one to normally get my Callaways in a twist but I felt compelled to put pen to paper on this issue because there is in fact an extra rule in golf, which is invoked weekly on all the major tours – I call it the 35th rule:
Rule 35 – Financial rewards for tour-playing pros
R35.1 – If you find yourself out on tour then any financial reward should be earned in accordance with equity (fairness)
Rule exception:
1 – If you also happen to be female then this rule does not apply to you (see exception note 2 instead)
2 – If you are female then further financial penalty points will be incurred if you neither adhere to societal norms of beauty and femininity nor show enough leg on the cover of GolfPunk magazine.
Crass? Maybe a little. Made up? Yes I know there are only 34 rules in golf…
As a keen amateur golfer I enjoy following both the Ladies European Tour (LET) and LPGA and recently there have been quite a few articles about the differences between the ladies and men’s game from tee to green, tour earnings and sponsorship. Comments on forums and articles follow the same pattern about performance, prestige and of course looks, with the media claiming that they’re only giving people what they want. But media is a “culture-fueler” and media governs and affects our lives more than ever in this digitalised age. We need to look at governance aspects across the board from the media to governing body initiatives if we want to see a cultural shift towards a more equitable remuneration and sponsoring structures for tour players up and down the board. Of course influencing the media and sponsors isn’t plain sailing as they want to generate revenue, but governing bodies can do more to enable a cultural shift. But I’ll get back to governance and culture further down my post.
If looks could kill, I’d be a millionnaire
Now I would like to think I would also be living the tour dream now had my parents had the possibility to bankroll proper golf lessons and send me to Bolton Golf Club when I showed promise with my half-set of irons and a dodgy 3-wood at the local pay and play aged 8 years old. However, despite my distant dreams of playing inside the ropes I’m glad, at least remuneration-wise, that I slipped on the IT boom banana skin and literally “careered” into organisational development and project management, especially with the disparity in financial remuneration between the women’s and men’s game.
My latest reading, an article in Golf Week by Beth Ann Nichols featuring one of my favourite LET players, Beth Allen, and how little sponsoring she gets despite being a high-ranked player on tour so far this season, touched on Rule 35 again. And in fact Rule 35 not only applies to golf but to many other professions, including my own. Now I don’t think Beth needed to make self-deprecating comments about her own features because there’s nothing wrong with red hair and freckles, although you possibly have to avoid the sun more and wear factor 50, and the last time I saw Beth I thought she looked better than I do in Adidas clothes. But the fact remains that unless you have a well-oiled PR machine on tour with you then the chances of sponsorship, exposure and “secondary earnings” remains rather low. Even worse, it’s still a struggle to get sponsorship even if you’re playing well. And Beth’s reasoning is nothing new. We’ve all known it since time began. The girl who was voted Rose Queen at my primary school didn’t get it because she was smarter or nicer or performed better in the classroom than the rest of us (she didn’t), but she was pretty and her parents were loaded. Little did we 10yr olds realise at the time that the disappointment we experienced over not being chosen was to get us ready for how the world really works. Looks matter, money counts. I went home after the vote and took my golf clubs down to the local park. She might have been picked for Rose Queen, but she couldn’t hit an 8 iron like I could…….
Another example. A friend of mine has a daughter who is now a golf pro at a college in California. She just became “chief girl recruiter” responsible for the college team and was out talent spotting here in Sweden when we played a quick 9 holes. She said that the previous bloke at the college was, without going as far as being bribed as such, very good at picking the attractive girls with the rich parents. Now that she was in charge she was certainly going to take a different approach based on talent and attitude. It’s a very Swedish way, and an admirable way, and I wish her all the success in the land of the free. I work a lot with leadership, change management and culture and it’s not easy to change culture. Or is it?
We are all responsible for our own leadership, attitude to change and how we form our culture, with a slight caveat: culture is more often than not influenced top-down starting with parents, schools, media, organisations etc and this is where governance comes into the equation. It’s here I think that golf’s governing bodies need to get with it.
Governance in golf as a way for cultural change and equity
So, from Beth Ann Nichols and Beth Allen to yet another (double!) Beth, namely Elizabeth Bethel and her article last week on the Progolf website regarding some changes to the UK golf governing bodies, the R&A and Ladies Golf Union (LGU). My first reaction to the announcement last week that they are to merge was a sigh of relief, followed by a huge sense of interest in how the new governing body will tackle the issue of governance. Elizabeth’s final point in her article strikes at the heart of the governance and equity issue: how to include the LGU in the R&A so that the women’s game doesn’t disappear in a fog of bunker sand on a windy links course. “Is this a governance issue?”, I hear people ask? Allow me to explain.
I’m sure that at first glance most will probably think it’s a management issue. The majority of business mergers land in the management category first. How to manage the transition, how to manage budgets, cost, roles and responsibilities. But if the governance aspect isn’t addressed first then they may inadvertently bowl a googlie at first bat (oh sorry, wrong sport, I meant short-side themselves at the first hole) and I believe that Beth is correct to question whether this merger will “advance the economic equity initiative”. I don’t believe it will unless the governance side of things are clear. Governance and management are not the same thing.
Now let me be clear about one thing. There are no easy answers and culture is rather complex because it’s based on values. And values are something that we develop from the moment we pop into the world and become exposed to its rules and regulations (governance), but the new “R&ALGU” organisation has a fantastic opportunity to set the right precedent for cultural change within golf. How? Let’s look at what governance is and how it should work in a little more detail.
There are six functions of governance *:
- Determining the objectives of the organisation
- Determining the ethics of the organisation
- Creating the culture of the organisation
- Designing and implementing the governance framework for the organisation
- Ensuring accountability by management
- Ensuring compliance by the organisation
*Source: Dr Lynda Bourne – The six functions of governance (2014)
There we have it. The little “e”-word pops up again: equity.
Get all five stewardship areas right within golf’s governing bodies and the enablers of cultural change, a change in attitudes from sponsors, even the media can and will seep through the world of golf like horizontal rain through my jacket on the 13th at Vasatorp, even right down to the kids with no rich parents to get them a Rose Queen title or golf club membership.
Governance is one of the major propagators of cultural change and the R&A and LGU have now a huge responsibility on their hands. If discussions on how the merger is to work are initiated firstly on governance and not on the management of politics, power and budget then I have high hopes for the merger, women’s golf and the cultural change needed top-down to change the way the world and media sees women’s golf and women who play golf. I’d like to see an abolition of my made-up Rule 35. After all, the principles of golf are based on fairness and we already have an official rule for that:
1-4. Points Not Covered by Rules
If any point in dispute is not covered by the Rules, the decision should be made in accordance with equity.
So to reiterate, my hopes are high for the sport of golf, for richer or poorer, amateur or pro, man or woman, red-head or blonde, brown or pink. I look with trepidation back across the North Sea to my former homeland for inspiration and governance on how we here in Sweden can also make good, sustainable steps forward for balancing out inequities between the golfing sexes and getting more women involved. The fact that the major governing bodies are looking to bridge the gaps between the sexes can only be a good thing if it’s done for the right reasons and with stable governance structures and functions in place.
In fact we’re already making headway here in Sweden in a different but similar area just trying to get women involved with golf thanks to the Swedish Golf Federation’s (SGF) Vision 50/50 program**, championed by 2015 Solheim Cup vice-captain Carin Koch and project managed by Annica Lundström, club manager at Örebro GC. I will keep following such initiatives with wide interest, especially from the perspective of how the SGF, regional golf federations and local clubs approach governance because it’s the basis for positive change if done correctly.
**Article in Swedish
Addendum
Just as I’d finished writing this article yesterday I heard about Hamish Grey standing down after heading the recently merged Scottish Golf Union with the Scottish Ladies Golfing Association. In an article in the Scotsman it was reported that he joined a single-sex golf club, which under the circumstances probably wasn’t a smart move!
He was criticised for joining the Barnton club in the middle of the amalgamation process, but was defended at the time by the then SGU chairman, Douglas Connon. “I do not see that Hamish Grey’s membership of a single-sex club has any bearing on his position as chief executive of the SGU,” said Connon. “The Equality Act allows for men and women to be members of single-sex clubs.”
