The LET's Meghan MacLaren took to Twitter recently to air her thoughts on golf’s gender pay gap, why it feels so unfair, and how she thinks we can implement change.
The LET's Meghan MacLaren took to Twitter recently to air her thoughts on golf’s gender pay gap, why it feels so unfair, and how she thinks we can implement change.
By Meghan MacLaren
I’m no stranger to Twitter. But during the men’s European Tour event in Abu Dhabi last month, I decided to tweet the prize fund, alongside the prize fund for the Ladies European Tour event I had played the previous week in the same country. And it’s fair to say I got a bit more retaliation than I’ve ever experienced in the past ...
"There's nothing to stop any woman getting her PGA Tour card ... one is a marketing team's dream with world-renowned stars, then there's the women ... male golf (and indeed all sport) is the pinnacle ..."
I was lucky enough to be a part of the LET’s season opener, the Fatima Bint Mubarak Ladies Open, played at Saadiyat Beach Golf Club. It is a spectacular setting and had one of the best fields that we are likely to see all season. The men played the HSBC Abu Dhabi Championship the following week at Abu Dhabi Golf Club. The difference in total prize funds between those two events was $6.7million. In other terms, the winner of our event, Charley Hull, won just over €38,000. The winner of the men’s event, Shane Lowry, won just over €1,000,000.
That’s 26 of Charley’s cheques in one.
I wasn’t calling for anything in particular when I originally tweeted those figures. I am aware of the fact that golf is a form of entertainment: it is run as a business, which means some people may be better equipped at making that more profitable than others. While myself and the majority of female professionals are not particularly happy with the way the world works, we are fairly accepting of the general disparity in prize funds, tournament frequency, and general popularity of the competing tours. However, when our male counterparts were playing a mere 25 miles from us, just a week later... this particular chasm hit us all a bit harder than usual.
Hence my tweet ...
Image credit: Stuart Franklin/Getty Images
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