Thursday, September 3, 2009

Surprise, Surprise. Pro Female Golfers Make 1/3 as Much as Men

The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tour begins today at a golf course just outside of Calgary. The CN Canadian Women’s Open features 156 top-notch female athletes at this world-class event.

I think it’s cool that a prestigious women’s golf tournament is being held here, but when I heard what the purse (prize money) is for this event, I decided to see how much male professional golfers can win in similar tournaments.

The results are exactly what I expected: the purse for the LPGA is about one-third the amount of a typical purse for a men’s professional golf tour. At the current LPGA tour in Calgary, the purse is 2.75 million. In the men’s PGA Tour in Boston from September 4 – 7, the purse is 7.5 million.

Gender-based discrepancies in prize money occur in almost every professional sport. If anyone still tells you that we no longer need feminism because “women have their rights and are equal,” this is just one example you can throw at them to prove that we still get paid less for doing the same job.

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