Career Links : Businesswomen Are Putting on Golf Shoes to Get Ahead
Many businesswomen trying to break through the “glass ceiling” that hinders their advancement in corporate America are finding that a good way to do it is with golf club in hand.
Yet while women executives typically take up the sport to gain an equal footing with male colleagues, many of them find the best rewards come from the networks and contacts they make with other women they meet on the links.
“Women in our organization find they not only generate business on the course with men, but with women. . . . As women progress in owning businesses and are successful in the marketplace, they are more social and interested in bonding and networking,” said Annette Roe, a Century City law firm administrator who helped establish the Los Angeles chapter of the Executive Women’s Golf League. This may be particularly beneficial in the Los Angeles area, which is second only to New York in the number of female business owners.
“Women are more apt to share their ideas and nurture,” Roe said, adding that five hours on a golf course provides plenty of time for sharing.
Businesswomen’s soaring interest in golf has helped make the still-fledgling Executive Women’s league and others like it booming successes. Nancy Oliver formed the group in West Palm Beach, Fla., less than three years ago to learn how to play golf; she has since set aside her public relations business and devotes her time to overseeing the growth of the league to more than 60 chapters nationally.
The experience of the women who join Roe and Oliver on the course confirms a finding of a study on the glass ceiling by executive search firm Korn/Ferry International and UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management. In comments on that study, released this week, many women said golf was career-enhancing, helping them gain entrance into the informal “club” of executives. Glass ceiling is the term given to the hurdles that women and minorities find largely keep them out of the executive suite or boardroom.
“Women who have reached the upper ranks of senior management are finding that golf gives them an advantage in socializing with their male peers on a business and personal level,” Caroline Nahas, a managing partner of Korn/Ferry’s Los Angeles office, said in a statement. Golf “gives them an entree to that informal club, helping build relationships outside the office that are critical to being completely accepted within a corporate culture.”
Mary Harris, a golfer for four years who now runs her own company, Harris Financial Advisors in Torrance, said golfing “allows me to find a common ground with a lot of male executives. If they’re not interested in talking about investing or about their profession, we can always talk about where we played last.”
But Anne Ronce, a San Francisco activist and writer on glass ceiling issues, said: “If someone likes to play golf and thinks it helps, more power to them. They should do that; it’s a lifetime sport and it’s wonderful. But the larger issue is: Are women being evaluated and promoted fairly? Is golf the solution to the problem of the glass ceiling? No, and it’s insulting to think that it could be.”
Besides, golf--a still predominantly male game--has its own glass ceiling of sorts, say women who have gone a few rounds on the links. Many private country clubs across the nation still bar women from holding full memberships; most still restrict women’s tee times or in other ways make it difficult for women to be full participants with men in golfing’s social environment.
Golf is not a haven for women executives, said Marcia Chambers, a contributing editor to Golf Digest magazine who has been covering the sport for five years and is now writing a book about the problems women face on the golf course.
“First you have to get in, and women are often barred at the clubhouse door,” Chambers said. And when they are not allowed on the greens at the most popular and convenient tee times for business-oriented golf, “it puts the woman corporate executive in a difficult position as to how corporate clients might view her,” she said.
Businesswomen, like most women golfers, spend most of their golfing time on public or daily-fee golf courses rather than private courses, statistics from the National Golf Foundation show. Because women spend more money on equipment and clothing than men (they buy for themselves and their mates), and now account for more than one-fifth of all golfers and 37% of all beginning golfers, some golf-related businesses have begun catering to women, and clubs are easing up on restrictions.
But more women are finding that golfing with the guys may not even be the best way to spend their time on the course. Beginning businesswomen golfers “learn to golf so they ultimately can play with the men,” Oliver said. “But what they find when they take up the game of golf and meet other women . . . they learn together, laugh together, they become friends and find that the other women have the potential to provide them with as much business as a man can.”
Women Golfers
The number of women who golf peaked in 1990. Women make up 21.8% of all golfers.
1992: 5.41 million
Source: National Golf Federeation
