By Johnny Orr

“There are legacy behaviours that disadvantage women in golf.”

Scotland is the home of Golf; it is ingrained in our history, and we have been playing it for over five hundred years. It is an extremely male-dominated sport with only 14% of golf club members in Scotland being women.

Whilst we are seeing many female sports increasing in popularity and engagement in recent years, the number of women playing golf has remained stagnant since records began. Francesca Dymond is the head of marketing and communications for Scottish Golf (the national governing body for the sport) and she says the organisation is not happy with the statistics: “ This is not as high as we would like and is also markedly lower than most sports across Scotland. We are however proud that there has been an increase in the number of junior girls playing golf, we tend to see this number drop off when the girls enter early adulthood and they then come back to the sport when they are older.”

For the sport to grow young girls will have to be introduced to golf at an early age, however, golf is not a sport that is part of the physical education system in Scottish schools and this is halting the sports progress. Francesca said: “Schools are a massive part of the picture. We at Scottish Golf feel like it should be part of the curriculum and so we are working with numerous organisations to try and target schools and embed it in at an early age.”

An appetite for the female game is growing. The 2023 Solheim Cup was the most-watched version of the tournament in its history. 734,000 was the peak audience for the Sunday singles session, this was a record-breaking number for the tournament. Francesca thinks that the real challenge is turning the public from viewers to players. She said: “We need to maximize the opportunities that these events have, capture the naturally higher interest as a whole, and create a legacy from which the whole sector can benefit.”

These tournaments are great for bringing a younger audience to the sport, the American-style spectacle is far more attractive to the younger generations. Francesca added: “The audience for the Solheim was bigger than it has ever been, these events do amazing things to raise awareness for the sport, events like the Ryder and Solheim are very Rock n Roll, sexy, glitzy and glamorous. They definitely point to a younger audience.”

One thing that women still face in the sport is discrimination, In 2020 the BBC reported that 65% of women have suffered sexism in their sport. In golf, this could be that certain tee times are not available to women, they do not feel welcome in their clubs, or even that when they turn up to play the female toilets and changing rooms are locked. This could be a contributing factor to why there are not more women playing golf in Scotland. Francesca, the public face of Scottish Golf said: “These are ostensibly discriminatory behaviours that we are trying to eradicate. This is not a thing of the past. It is an absolute given that female toilets should be open if ladies are present on the golf course.” With deep-rooted inequality in Scottish golf women often feel unwelcome within their clubs, and this is not acceptable.