Female Executives
Crack Glass Ceiling
Golf Lessons Open Traditional
Male Arena of Dealmaking
By Nancy Reckler
Special to The Washington Post
August 6, 1995
JERICHO, N.Y. -- Every female executive knows the feeling: The men come back from a golf outing, talking about the contacts they've made with clients and the deals they've hatched.
Later, the men gather in the boss's office to swap golf stories and strategies. But the suspicion arises among those left at their desks that career moves are being plotted, too.
Now, the female managers are fighting back. To be players in the office, they're learning to play on the links.
More than a hundred businesswomen spent one recent day trudging across the greens at Long Island's Meadowbrook Country Club, just a short drive from New York City, for a golf clinic designed especially for the female executive.
"I felt like there were so many things going on in the office that I was missing out on by not being a golf player," said Rose Serels, 28, a vice president of global securities services at Chase Manhattan Bank. "Without this type of clinic, I never would have started."
This is exactly what golf champion Jane Blalock had in mind when she began the clinics for women. In just four years, what began as a one-day clinic at the Bethesda Country Club in Maryland has become a 22-city tour that's growing in popularity.
Because of the demand, eight more cities were added to the tour just this year, and all of them have been booked solid with female bankers, advertisers and traders trying to putt, drive and chip their way through the corporate glass ceiling.
Earlier this year, when the tour hit the Washington area, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics says has the largest concentration of professional women in the nation, it had been sold out for three months.
"It enhanced my position in the company, being seen as one of the guys," said Myrna Friedman, a partner in the Arlington law firm Sargeant & Friedman, who attended this year's clinic at the Argyle Country Club in Silver Spring.
"I get to play with our very top people, and it gives me a chance to get to know them better," said Deborah Lawrence, vice president of government affairs at Williams Cos. in the District. "I can't say it's the only thing that has helped me, but being the only woman, people get to know me."
According to the National Golf Foundation, the number of women in golf has begun to rise significantly this decade. Forty percent of all new players are women, and four of every 10 women who are signing up to play are corporate professionals.
"I had stopped playing when I married, but when I came to Washington I took one look around and started it up again," said Rep. Barbara B. Kennelly (D-Conn.). She said she sometimes uses golf outings to discuss legislation, but that they're more useful for building relationships with other lawmakers than for cutting deals.
"Why shouldn't you be there when things are happening?" she said.
But there are some female executives who say they do not like golf, and they scoff at the idea that they should learn to play a game with men in order to climb the corporate ladder. One Maryland executive, who asked not to be identified because she thought she could get in trouble with her company, said that although she knew that learning golf could help in business, "I'm not even interested in it for even that. I hate the game."
The primary goal of the clinics is simply to make female executives more familiar with the game, not to become experts at it. "You don't have to be a perfect golfer to go out and compete in corporate or charity events," Blalock told the women at Meadowbrook last month.
Some of her students said they always had been intimidated by the game and had refused opportunities to try their hand at it during business outings because they didn't want to look incompetent in front of their co-workers and clients.
"I wasn't going to make a fool of myself having never picked up a club," said Pamela Hootkin, vice president, treasurer and secretary of Phillips-Van Heusen Corp.
"My biggest hurdle to get over was thinking that all men could play great," said Barbara Tobias, vice president of consumer lending funding at American Express Travel Related Services Co.
Like many other women learning the game, Tobias said that the largely male culture of golf did not bother her because she is accustomed to having men dominate business offices anyway.
"When you get out on the golf course, you are split into twosomes or foursomes, so even if there are 75 men there and only a few women, your worst scenario is you're golfing with three men."
Besides, she added, "My work environment is predominantly men. In most meetings I'm used to being in the minority, so I don't find that intimidating at all."
The women who came to Meadowbrook said that if they did not put their fears aside they faced a grim alternative.
As Kate McMorrow of NatWest Markets, put it, "I work on the trading floor, and in the summer most of the men would take off to play golf and leave me with all the work."
Sitting in the office could be easier. At the clinics, the women spend the morning rotating every half hour through four stations of instruction. In the afternoon, they split into teams to play a round of scramble -- a game in which the team plays with the ball that was hit farthest off the tee.
Four hours later, the day ends with cocktails and prizes for the longest drive, best putt and the rare player who had a hole in one.
Companies usually pick up the $225 charge for the clinic, and often encourage their employees to bring clients along.
Chase Manhattan Bank, a sponsor of the event, sent 77 of its female officers and their clients this year. The bank became involved with the clinic two years ago after some female executives began pointing out that they lacked the advantage of their male counterparts who could entertain clients with a round of golf.
"I enjoy the game, but there are definite benefits to learning it," said Serels of Chase Manhattan. "You develop stronger relationships with your clients so when business does come up in the future, they will think of you and your company."
Like Serels, Karen Duncan, 41, the owner of an advertising agency in New Jersey, has found that playing hard outside of the office is as important as working hard. She now has regular golf outings with some of her clients. At one recent golf tournament, she met a woman who sold a promotional item -- a brass key ring -- that one of her clients was looking for. Duncan got the two of them together and helped them make a deal.
"If you're in a business situation and the subject of golf comes up between men, it's amazing to watch their faces when you suddenly say, You know, that's my problem too -- the short game,' " Duncan said.
"Then the next time I see them, they will ask how my game is going. I like feeling that entree into the personality of someone in business, which is difficult for women sometimes."
Copyright The Washington Post
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