Gender and Discrimination in Professional Golf

This article explores the evidence of gender discrimination in professional golf. It explains the methodology used to examine the earnings gap. This is followed by explanations of the golf production function. Then, the description of the data is presented, including summary comparisons between men and women for the years 1998 and 2008. A natural outcome of hitting the ball farther is the decrease in driving accuracy noted in the statistics. The 2008 regressions on levels of earnings per tournament are estimated with less precision than those from 1998. Some care should be exercised when interpreting the SANDSAVE portion of the decomposition. Only 9% of the gap between the women's average earnings and the men's average earnings is attributable to discrimination. The PGA Tour, which is the source of the data for the male golfers in the sample, does not discriminate against women.