Claims abuse prompted golfer’s resignation
The husband of a woman at the forefront of Manawatu Golf Club’s transition to gender equality says she has been forced to resign from the club’s committee after being abused by other members.
But the club’s executive committee say they have not had any issues of abuse reported to them and such behaviour would not be accepted.
Bruce Manninen, husband of longstanding committee member Karen Manninen, said his wife’s offer of a resignation came after ‘‘receiving abusive emails and texts’’ in backlash to her comments in an article in the Manawatu Standard on Wednesday.
In the story, Karen Manninen said she was pleased the club had fixed what she described as ‘‘a human rights issue’’ by moving to gender equality when it came to booking tee times, effectively ending its longstanding men-only Saturday afternoons.
Committee vice-president Nathan Hopcroft said some members were upset with how they were portrayed when Manninen said some of those against changes believed Saturday afternoons were ‘‘men’s time and that is how they like it’’.
‘‘Not a single member at the golf club has gone on the record and there has never been a vote to say are you for equality or not,’’ Hopcroft said.
He maintained that the opposition surrounded the method the committee used to implement the rule-change.
Club captain Brent Cawthray said a lot of people were unhappy with the process, but ‘‘rapt with the the outcome’’.
According to Bruce Manninen, who is not a member of the club, the abusive messages to his wife climaxed after the story was published, including a phone call from a member.
‘‘The night the article went out he rang her up and I could hear him yelling at her through the phone,’’ he said. ‘‘She has been in tears over this.’’
Karen Manninen offered her resignation to the rest of the committee the following day over email.
Hopcroft said the executive committee met to discuss the frustrations they were hearing from members regarding the comments in the story.
He then called Karen Manninen to inform her of their decision.
‘‘In the call I had with her when the resignation became official and accepted, there was no talk of her receiving any abuse,’’ he said.
Bruce Manninen said his wife had expected the support of her peers.
‘‘She handed in her resignation thinking that the committee would support her for all her work in the past, but they didn’t,’’ he said.
‘‘She has been a member of the club for 18 years, a committee member for eight years and has been heavily involved with trying to encourage young kids. At the moment she feels she has been banished from the club.’’
He said after watching what his golf-mad wife had been subjected to, he decided he needed to make the issue known.
‘‘The Manawatu Golf Club promotes itself as a prestigious club. But it’s not, because the culture of the club does not reflect this. The culture needs to change and this has to be led from the top down.’’