Female PGA of America Professionals represent just 4.66% of the membership (PGA, n.d.), despite female golfers participating at a rate of 24% in the United States (National Golf Foundation, 2023). Notwithstanding recent industry initiatives and rare signs of progress, golf continues to be a tremendously male-dominated industry. Ritualized behaviors, gender-based norms and roles, and both covert and overt forms of sexism and gender-based treatment through microaggressions continue to infiltrate golf. The current study sought to examine the experiences of female PGA Golf Management students’ internship experiences. The theoretical framework lenses utilized included hegemonic masculinity and critical feminist theory. Hegemonic masculinity concedes that social constructions emphasize, value, and institutionalize more masculine traits such as power, hyper competitiveness, aggression, and sexual objectification, while femininity is marginalized (Connell, 1987). Critical feminist theory examines social systems for gender-based oppression. It considers everyday practices that may go ignored or undetected, aiming to bring about change in social, political, and cultural areas of life such as sport (Hundley, 2004). The participants were 14 female PGA Golf Management students averaging 10.93 months of undergraduate internship experiences. Utilizing a hermeneutic phenomenological theoretical approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted. Key findings included participants’ overall internship experiences, gender- and sex-based treatment, and recommendations for moving the golf industry forward. Gender microaggressions such as sexist comments, second-class citizenship, sexual objectification, questioning of knowledge, skills, and abilities, role restriction, exclusion, and a “boys club” culture was reported by participants. Coping and persistence strategies, recommendations to future female PGA Golf Management students are also offered. Finally, based on participant responses, practical implications are offered to golf industry leaders, the PGA of America, and PGA Golf Management programs.
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