‘Ladies present!’: an auto/ethnographic study of women amateur golfers at an English provincial golf club

Abstract

Despite high general participation rates in golf in England and a raft of initiatives to encourage more women and younger players into golf, fewer than one in five amateur golfers in England is female and there is a real dearth of young women entering the sport. Sexist policies and practices have been posited as possible barriers to women’s and girls’ grass-roots participation in golf, but to date little qualitative research has been undertaken on the lived experiences of recreational women players themselves. To address this considerable gap, an 18-month ethnographic and autoethnographic research project was undertaken within a case study club in the English East Midlands. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with thirteen amateur women-players, ethnographic observations, detailed autoethnographic field notes and video auto-reflections, this article explores some of the key themes that emerged from the research, utilising primarily Foucauldian-feminist theoretical perspectives to frame the qualitative findings. The two key themes selected for analysis here are: (1) women’s lived experience of corporeal surveillance in golfing contexts; and: (2) discursive othering and objectification of women in golf.