Introduction – Professional and Service-Based Women’s Golf Societies

As women’s golf grew beyond club and county boundaries, a new pattern of organisation emerged — societies formed around shared professions, service ties, and social networks. These groups reflected both the opportunities and constraints of their time: women were entering public life through their families’ professions or their own pioneering careers, yet their place in society remained defined by association. The creation of clubs for the wives, daughters, and relatives of military officers, parliamentarians, doctors, and lawyers shows how golf became a bridge between private identity and public belonging. Through these societies, women found companionship, recognition, and a quiet assertion of status — using golf not only for recreation, but as a means to claim visibility within traditionally male worlds.

The following milestones trace the earliest of these societies — each founded by women who transformed proximity to male-dominated professions into platforms for participation, connection, and quiet progress within the world of golf.

⚖️  1893 – United Services Ladies’ Golf Club Formed (ENG)

Created in Gosport, Hampshire, by women associated with the military services, showing golf’s spread into diverse social groups.
Sources: Golf’s Missing Links; R&A timeline.

⚖️  1911 – Ladies’ Parliamentary Golfing Association founded (UK)

Lady Ellis Griffith approaches Mabel Stringer to help found the Ladies’ Parliamentary Golfing Association for relatives of both Houses of Parliament — reflecting the close ties between early women’s golf and Edwardian social hierarchies.
Source: The Golfing Ladies (1984).

⚖️ 1911 – Ladies’ Medical Golf Society Formed (UK)

A pioneering group for women in medicine, linking professional identity and leisure at a time when women doctors were still rare.

⚖️  1912 – Ladies’ Legal Golf Association founded (UK)

Formed by Mabel Stringer, connecting women in the legal profession — one of the first female-led associations tied to professional identity rather than family relations.
Sources: LLGA archives; The Golfing Ladies (1984).