I’m the financial officer of Club Golf, one of the co-ed club sports at Stanford. As a woman, I’m deeply concerned that Club Sports’ new financial policies for co-ed teams, which they claim will benefit women, will actually harm them. 

Since COVID, we’ve focused on rebuilding. Between 2023 and 2024, we increased our national ranking from 102nd to 43th place through hard work and inclusive recruitment. Our membership has also doubled because we’ve promoted our organization through equal-access venues like campus club fairs and social media. We don’t track gender demographics because we’re more focused on competing and improving the team as a whole. Still, two-thirds of our executive board are women, and one of our founders was a woman. Our female competitors are at the top of our club and easily qualify for tournaments. And from what I hear, our female members feel included and represented thanks to continuous efforts to expand across communities. 

However, the progress we have made towards inclusivity is now at risk. 

Until recently, receiving funding for Club Golf was straightforward. Every spring, each club team’s financial officer submitted a budget to Club Sports, which then applied for one large grant from the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU). In the fall, Club Sports distributed ASSU funds to its constituent teams in one-time deposits. Teams were responsible for managing their funds throughout the year to cover the costs of uniforms, tournaments and more.

This year, however, that process was overhauled. Now, every individual expense must be pre-approved by Club Sports on their timeline. While that creates more paperwork, we initially thought it could be a positive change since it didn’t cap funding for additional tournaments.

Then came the catch: Club Sports and the Stanford administration has now decreed that every co-ed team must aim for over 51% female representation on its competitive roster to meet Title IX compliances. Any extra male members must self-fund their expenses. To illustrate: if our competitive team has eight members — three women and five men — Club Sports will only pay for the three women and three men. The remaining two men must pay out of pocket.

In a conversation with Club Sports, our co-president urged them to recognize a simple truth: golf, throughout its centuries-long history, has never seen women overrepresented. In fact, according to the National Golf Foundation, 28% of golfers in the U.S. were women as of 2024, a record high. Our co-president explained that it doesn’t make sense for our student-run club to be penalized for that broader gender pattern. They didn’t budge.

Club Sports claims the changes are in the interest of women, but heading into my third year as financial officer, I never felt that Club Sports particularly cared about my experience as a female club sport leader. It’s more likely their motivations relate to budget pressure rather than Title IX. That would especially make sense considering that Club Sports also just removed funding for travel as well as for financial aid on dues. Since University-wide funding availability has been cut due to new federal policies, this new policy is disguised as a motion towards gender equality. There are a few reasons why it’s damaging to everyone, especially female athletes. 

First, it incentivizes gender segregation. The policy only applies to co-ed sports, which means a club could split into separate men’s and women’s teams to avoid funding losses for male players — but that would destroy the policy’s purpose. And unfortunately, a competitive women’s golf club would face difficulty establishing itself due to limited female participation and in turn reduced funding eligibility. A men’s team, on the other hand, would thrive, as there’s no shortage of male athletes interested in golf. 

As a woman, I don’t want to be excluded from the sport I love. And as a financial officer, I know a co-ed club team is good for financial and administrative efficiency. Yet, after cutting co-ed funding, Club Sports informed us that “compliance and proportionality is something [they] want teams to start striving for.” This new policy could push organizations to regress into what the policy claims to fight: male-dominated communities. 

Second, it advantages donor-backed teams and pressures unreasonable funding routes. Because the policy doesn’t forbid majority-male teams, co-ed teams with external donor support can easily sidestep these rules by paying for the additional male players, while smaller, student-funded teams (like ours) cannot. That’s just unfair. 

Additionally, our club keeps dues low to welcome non-competitive members from all backgrounds and skill levels. That accessibility has helped attract new female participants. But Club Sports suggested that we rely on unrestricted dues — collected from non-competitive members for recreational programming — to fund tournaments for the competitive team. Alternatively, they would have us unfairly ask a few male players to pay an additional hundreds of dollars. Inevitably, the costs will be shared by all members, including the women the policy claims to benefit.

Third, the implementation was opaque. Our team wasn’t informed of the changes until days before our first tournament. If Club Sports cared about inclusivity, they would have collaborated with the female leaders of co-ed teams. They also would have communicated future adjustments and encouraged teams to start moving toward them, rather than imposing immediate penalties that left us no time to plan. 

For Club Golf, the prioritization of quotas over performance could undo years of progress by our leadership. I imagine that my team’s female athletes are not the only ones who are deeply frustrated, especially since the policy intends to create fairness and equality.

If Club Sports genuinely wanted to promote gender equity, they should focus on the overall distribution of funding across sports rather than punishing individual co-ed teams. For example, creating and funding more programs that already interest women would facilitate equal distribution of resources. While I support efforts to promote women’s participation in golf, penalties at the college level can’t fix a systemic attribute.

When administrators impose blanket rules instead of communicating with their student organizations, they mistake governance for advocacy. Equity cannot simply be achieved through quotas or paperwork; at the very least, it requires collaboration and understanding. Until Club Sports and our administration recognizes that, they’ll continue to hurt the students they aim to support.

Araha Uday ’26 is the financial officer of Stanford Club Golf.