(The Center Square) – Like Riley Gaines stepping forward and momentum building in numbers, gender policy decisions Wednesday by two major governing bodies in golf can be pebbles hitting the water.
Two golfers – one an aspiring professional, the other an accomplished retired veteran – are hopeful.
“A win in women’s golf is a win for other sports,” pro golfer Lauren Miller said. “Hopefully it can give other organizations, other women and sports, momentum. Golf did it, why can’t we? It’s been incredibly unifying.”
The LPGA and the United States Golf Association, separate of each other, modified gender policies. The LPGA says, “Players assigned male at birth and who have gone through male puberty are not eligible to compete in the aforementioned events.” The USGA says, “athletes must be assigned female at birth or have transitioned to female prior to going through male puberty in order to compete.”
Protection of women’s spaces – be it athletics, public facilities like restrooms, prisons among them – is a hot-button topic, one that is in statehouses coast to coast and was in the campaign season just completed.
“Ultimately, so many of us have taken a lot of courage and gratitude toward one another,” Miller, a 23-year-old resident of Addison, Texas, told The Center Square on Thursday while visiting family in Niceville, Fla. “There is strength in numbers. That’s a big thing we learned from this. One person can talk and get the ripple of the water going; if you want a wave, you need the full boulder or whatever the analogy. We had to get the conversation started.”
Miller, playing the mini-tour level ANNIKA Women’s All Pro Tour and NXXT Golf Tour as she strives to eventually earn her LPGA card, was among 275-plus women signing a letter to tour leaders requesting guidelines be changed so women compete against women.
Broader, Gaines is among if not the leader of the movement across all sports and levels of competition.
“I would have loved to see the policies go one step further that your biological sex is based on chromosomes, which are unchangeable,” Amy Olson, retired LPGA veteran with two runners-up in majors, told The Center Square in a telephone interview Thursday from her home in Fargo, N.D. “Maybe we’ll see that down the road.
“Legally, they weren’t quite ready to go there yet. From the grassroots standpoint and common sense, there’s two sexes – male and female. And it should be that simple. Unfortunately, we have the legal landscape that has made that a hard thing to argue. That’s the main reason why they landed at the post-puberty ban.”
Miller agrees.
“The goal is to get back to women only. Period,” she said. “Not leaving the door open to males to compete, even if transitioned pre-puberty. That’s a separate issue.”
The “separate issue” she in part references, and said would be interesting to watch, is the U.S. Supreme Court handling a Tennessee law banning medication to treat gender dysphoria for minors. At least 26 states have similar restrictions or bans.
“I think the thing that has always driven this and changes, has been the law,” the 32-year-old Olson said. “Threats of lawsuits, and then financial loss.”
She said the framing is the “individual who was born male and wants to compete in women’s spaces.” Rather, she said, than the women who lose opportunities and have spaces, privacies and opportunities taken away through no fault of their own.
“I’m super thankful for the Independent Women’s Forum,” she said. “They’ve allowed us to tell our stories, our stories of hard work and sacrifice. It’s not about one person being able to compete; that means there’s another person who can’t.”
Olson and Miller, like Gaines and fellow former collegiate swimmer Paula Scanlan, are all ambassadors with the Independent Women’s Forum. On multiple occasions, they’ve faced attacks for position, yet they have never relented.
Olson said women’s pro golf altered its gender policy in 2011 amid litigation. The push point is an equation arguably reaching a climax this year with storylines of Hailey Davidson, the presidential election, finances and litigation for pro golf, and pressure by litigation in other places, such as against the NCAA.
Davidson, born male in 1992 and having had hormone treatments in 2015 and a gender surgery in 2021, was previously eligible for the LPGA and affiliated minor league tour circuits. Davidson this year was close when trying to earn a spot in the U.S. Women’s Open conducted by the USGA, an LPGA Tour card, and did win on the NXXT Golf Tour.
“In a perfect world, the decision would have come sooner,” Miller said. “There is a little bit of a fallout, someone directly impacted, in multiple ways. Hailey Davidson had the opportunity under the rules to go and participate, and as a result, advanced through Stage 1 qualifying and earned the right to play the Epson Tour. The rule revokes that.
“This rule is correct. It prioritizes women and women’s spaces. It’s incredibly tough to Davidson to swallow, thinking that by advancing through, would have a chance to play on the Epson Tour. I wish that had not been on the table, so it would not go through what is going through now. At the same time, this decision is huge and I’m grateful that the LPGA and USGA are again prioritizing what is best for women’s sports and making sure fairness is at the forefront.”
Miller says her courage for taking a stand starts “first and foremost” with faith. Three of her four older siblings are active-duty Air Force, and she said their sacrifice for country is “true bravery.” And makes her stand “a no-brainer for me to want to do my part to help women’s sports as it should be.”
“When this issue was right on my doorstep,” Miller said, “I had to look at myself in the mirror and say do I want to remain quiet and stay silent, and silence says everything, or stand up and fight for my peers and this next generation of female athletes.”
Davidson posted an Instagram story on Wednesday after the rulings.
“Can’t say I didn’t see this coming,” it read. “Banned from the Epson and the LPGA. All the silence and people wanting to stay ‘neutral’ thanks for absolutely nothing. This happened because of all your silence.”
Or, perhaps, because Gaines and the Independent Women’s Forum spoke.
“Her story is so compelling,” Olson said of Gaines. “Not just sport side and competitiveness, but the women’s locker room and violation of that, that women feel if they don’t have private and safe spaces. And then, the way she’s been able to express herself. She’s given women the license to go and say, ‘That’s my story.’
“She’s an example … that no one sets out to be a hero. She spoke the truth, and that’s what heroes do. She’s the hero of women’s sports right now.”
Olson, her last tournament before retirement the U.S. Women’s Open at famed Pebble Beach while seven months pregnant, said her courage has multiple drivers. Opportunities for her 14-month-old daughter are as big as any.
“It’s not necessarily about opportunities taken away from me in 2024, it’s about her, her high school career, and where she wants to compete,” Olson said. “The implications of current decisions on future outcomes. If I don’t speak up now, I don’t know where her opportunities will be in 10, 15, 20 years.”
Miller and other ambassadors talk about that, too. She describes a fascination with just the last year.
“It was neat for me to see the way that it grew over the course of this year,” she said. “Conversations with Riley at different points – she just made it so clear to me, just keep going. We know we’re on the right side of this.
“The election, it was a critical point. People from the left and right, really agreeing on this. We knew we had the majority. It was a matter of continuing to talk about it and speak truth. We were going to get there, and we were willing to do whatever we needed to do to get it done.”
