Golf for a Living
I just realized that I know THREE people who’s job it is, for the most part, to play golf for a living. They’re all men. None of them are Tiger Woods. That is, they aren’t really professional golfers—instead, they play golf as a major part of their jobs—as a way to woo clients, keep relationships solid, and so forth.
Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s just a coincidence that the folks I know with such jobs are men—but I feel like this sort of illustrates the double standard that’s out there. When I was at business school they offered Golf (not for credit—but as an option so that you’d have your A game when you went to those big-time client meetings). I had already taken golf in college so look at me, ahead of the curve. I HATE golf but I am qualified to play it.
But I sort of feel like those golf jobs aren’t necessarily out there for women. Could that be because there’s still a (gasp) double standard there? There is no way, simply no way, I can justify an afternoon of golf with the amount of work responsibilities I have…but it is quite literally a job for other people—people who are paid more than me, I’d add.
This isn’t supposed to be a venting session or forum for complaining. But I do think that part of the issue is that it wouldn’t occur to me to ASK for that kind of job. And maybe part of the issue of why I, personally, as a working mother face some of the issues that I do is that I’m afraid to ask for certain things, thinking they’d be out of line—wanting to appear grateful for what I have. But that’s kind of nuts. So many working moms huge contributions are taken for granted…which all goes back to why they’d just as soon throw in the towel rather than fight.
This also leads me to another discussion I had with a friend, who encouraged us to include dads in our forum. While I know that there are “stay at home dads” out there…one lives two doors down from me…I don’t think it’s a hugely widespread phenomenon yet and even more importantly I think men in general face very different issues in the workplace—as stay at home dads, flex-time workers, or full timers. Our focus here has to be on moms—because there are so many issues to work on—though we encourage any dads out there who want to develop a similar forum to give us a call, and we’ll partner with you.
I never, never considered myself a feminist at all until I started getting slapped in the face with some of the inequalities! I do think it’s in part a function of being in a certain industry, but in general, my firm position now is that if someone’s getting PAID to play golf I can’t feel guilty for being on a conference call when I’m at the park.