You have now studied the origins of women’s golf, the founding of the LPGA, and the careers of two of the most significant players in tour history. In this final lesson for Week 5, we examine the broader context in which women’s professional golf has operated — specifically, the persistent gap between the resources, coverage, and commercial value assigned to women’s professional golf and those assigned to the men’s game.

This gap is real, measurable, and documented. Understanding it — its causes, its consequences, and the arguments made about it from different perspectives — is essential to a serious historical understanding of women’s golf.

The Prize Money Gap: The Data

The most direct measure of the gap between men’s and women’s professional golf is prize money.

In 1950 — the year the LPGA was founded — total PGA Tour prize money was approximately $459,950. Total LPGA prize money in the same year was approximately $50,000 — roughly 11% of the men’s total.

In 1970, PGA Tour total prize money was approximately $6.75 million. LPGA total prize money was approximately $435,000 — roughly 6% of the men’s total. The gap had widened.

In 1990, PGA Tour total prize money was approximately $46.2 million. LPGA total prize money was approximately $17.1 million — roughly 37% of the men’s total. The gap had narrowed significantly, in part due to the commercial growth Lopez’s era had enabled.

In 2000, PGA Tour total prize money was approximately $167 million. LPGA total prize money was approximately $43 million — roughly 26% of the men’s total. The gap had widened again relative to the 1990 ratio.

These numbers tell a complex story — one of genuine growth in women’s prize money over fifty years, but also persistent and in some periods widening disparity relative to the men’s game.

The Television Coverage Gap

Prize money disparities reflect and are caused by television coverage disparities. Television rights fees are the primary revenue source for professional sports tours. The more a tour’s events are televised, the more rights fees it can command, the more sponsors it can attract, and the more prize money it can offer.

Throughout the LPGA’s history, its events have received significantly less television coverage than comparable PGA Tour events. In the 1960s and 1970s, most LPGA events received no television coverage at all. In the 1980s and 1990s, coverage expanded but remained limited compared to the men’s game.

The reasons for this disparity are debated. Television networks have historically argued that women’s sports draw smaller audiences and therefore justify lower rights fees and less coverage. Critics have argued that the smaller audiences are partly a consequence of the lower coverage — that women’s sports have never been given the investment and promotion that would allow them to develop the audiences their quality deserves.

This chicken-and-egg argument — does low coverage cause low audiences, or do low audiences justify low coverage — is one of the central unresolved debates in the economics of women’s sport.

The Argument From the Other Side

In the interest of the kind of balanced historical analysis this curriculum demands, it is worth presenting the counterarguments to the narrative of unjust disparity.

Some economists and sports media analysts have argued that prize money and television coverage in professional sport are and should be determined by market forces — by what audiences are willing to watch and what advertisers are willing to pay to reach those audiences. On this view, the gap between men’s and women’s golf prize money is not evidence of discrimination but of genuine audience preference differences that the market is accurately reflecting.

This argument has some empirical support: men’s golf has, historically, drawn larger television audiences than women’s golf in most markets. If television is primarily a commercial enterprise — which it is — then the coverage and rights fee decisions that follow from audience size are, on this view, economically rational rather than discriminatory.

The counter to this counter is that audience preferences are not formed in a vacuum — they are shaped by the investment made in developing and promoting content. Women’s golf has never received the promotional investment that men’s golf has. The audience preference data we have is therefore not a measure of inherent interest differences but of the consequences of unequal investment.

Both arguments have merit. Neither fully resolves the question. This is what genuine analytical complexity looks like — and it is appropriate for Stage 3 students to engage with it without being pushed toward a predetermined conclusion.

International Women’s Golf: A Different Picture

One of the most significant developments in women’s golf in the final decade of the 20th century was the emergence of international players — particularly from South Korea and Sweden — who challenged and eventually transformed the competitive landscape of the LPGA.

We noted Se Ri Pak’s significance in Week 4. By the late 1990s, the pipeline of South Korean players she had inspired was already producing results — players like Grace Park and Kim Mi-hyun were following her onto the LPGA Tour and competing successfully.

From Sweden, players like Annika Sorenstam were redefining what excellence in women’s golf looked like. Sorenstam won 72 LPGA events over her career — the third highest total in tour history — including ten major championships. She dominated the tour in the late 1990s and early 2000s with a precision and consistency that drew comparisons to Nicklaus on the men’s tour.

The international dimension of women’s professional golf by the year 2000 was significantly more developed than the international dimension of the men’s game at a comparable stage. The LPGA had players from Sweden, South Korea, Australia, England, and across Europe competing at its highest level — a diversity of talent and background that would intensify further in the 21st century.