Golf Handicaps & the Right to Vote

In 1893, about the same time that the women's suffrage movement in Great Britain dominated local politics, Miss Issette Pearson established the Ladies Golf Union. Just as Emmeline Pankhurst was intent on women getting the right to vote in England, Issette Pearson made developing a "system of handicapping" her first and foremost goal for the Ladies Golf Union. She was helped by William Laidlaw Purves, a founder of Royal St. George's Golf Club, who was a strong advocate for universal handicapping but unable to get this idea accepted by his male peers.

Miss Pearson's role in establishing the handicap system as we know it was reported in the April 28 issue of Golfweek Magazine. It took Miss Pearson and the Ladies Golf Union ten years to establish a national system of handicapping, doing..."what the men had signally failed to do." (quote from Robert Browning, "A History of Golf")

It took Emmeline Pankhurst and her organization, the Women's Franchise League, another 15 years(!!!) to get women in Great Britain the same voting rights as men.

What does handicapping have to do with women's suffrage? Nothing, really. But I suspect the resistance to either had roots in the same issue: a perceived loss of personal power. Voting and the game of golf are both power plays, and handicapping and voting rights level the playing field.