When Deb Kember thinks about her naming as the ‘Most Influential Woman in Golf 2024’ at the inaugural R&A Women in Golf Charter Awards in Melbourne recently, she deflects credit, as is her wont.

To the co-creator of the Golf Leaders Network, which promotes women in leadership positions in the sport, and current President of Brisbane Golf Club, it’s about the people who she has been on the journey with.

“We’ve been working hard at the club and across the Golf Leaders Network to support the charter, so it’s fabulous recognition and encouragement to keep going,” she says.

But her modesty cannot overshadow the achievements of the woman who with two others started up the GLN in 2022. Kember, an educator by profession, is an agent of change in the sport, and the R&A Charter awards were about celebrating that.

“It’s really interesting, I’ve been playing golf since about 1978, and while I wasn’t a club player initially, when I and many others started joining clubs, we found an environment that wasn’t changing as society was changing,” she says.

“Because women weren’t as welcome in some of the clubs that were I suppose the main places that people were joining, women were forming their own world. They created a very strong golfing program. The problem was, it was just about women’s golf. They weren’t running the clubs.

“They were only able to operate within what they were allowed to do by those who were running the club, and there weren’t many women among those, or very few examples of clubs who had women involved in a leadership space.

“It was about ‘keep doing what you’re doing as long as it doesn’t interfere with the rest of the golf at the club’. That was at various clubs, not just ours.”

Fortunately, the tide has turned to some extent. Kember was elected as Brisbane GC’s President in 2023, becoming the 60th woman in Australia to become a Board Chair at a golf club. Currently, there are 16, bearing in mind that in many clubs, the Captain is the pivotal figure rather than the President.

Kember has seen it all within her own club, from the inclusion of women as full seven-day members, to open time sheets, to tee markers based on ability rather than gender, to the election of the first woman as board member in 2014 and then her own elevation to Vice President and then President.

The R&A’s Women in Golf Charter came along in 2021 and has been signed by more than 100 clubs and organisations around Australia. Kember view is that it as a game-changer.

“I think it is because it’s provided clubs with a bit of a roadmap to strengthen women’s involvement in golf, and leadership. And it’s come at a good time for clubs who have started to make inroads in that area. Many of us are doing it out of our interest in promoting women’s involvement but unless you know what some of the other clubs are doing, it’s a little bit like working in the dark.

“It's not only the how, it’s also that it’s a tool to emphasise how important taking some action in this area is. It helps with the rest of the members to say ‘this work really is important and it’s time we made some changes’.”

Leadership runs in Deb Kember’s family. Her father Harry Kember was President of Kogorah (NSW) and Sanctuary Cove (Queensland) clubs and her husband David Prince was a previous President of Brisbane GC.

But while she often heard her father and her husband debating the ins and outs of running golf clubs, she had not thought about getting involved herself until a visit to Toowoomba Golf Club, where Nancy Young was the President, more than 10 years ago.

Meeting Young, and hearing her talk about golf management, turned out to be a trigger point. “It gives a much more balanced conversation about how to go about it,” says Kember. “It’s not necessarily a space that there are definitive answers to, and like any organization or company, you need a diversity of views around the table.

“Golf is exactly the same. The golf world hasn’t been keeping up with industry and societal change. That’s what we want.”

Kember took up the game while studying at university and in her early days as a physical education teacher. She has played the game ever since, currently off a 15 handicap.

“Golf’s not only good exercise, it’s a fabulous environment to get to know people and build friendships that are lasting and based on actiivities that we share in common,” she said. “For me, that’s where the whole idea of golf clubs comes in. You build a community and a community is something that stays with your for life.

“It’s like the old line in ‘Cheers’: ‘You come to a place where everybody knows your name’. That’s the beauty of investing in a golf club membership.”

The Golf Leaders Network is bursting at the seams now with high achieving women who have picked up leadership roles in golf clubs, but Deb Kember is not about resting on what has been achieved. While she acknowledges the gains made by women in the interests of the sport, she is reluctant to embrace complacency.

“It’s tricky, I suppose I have concerns that the road ahead is going to be up and down rather than all up,” she says. “It’s something that we need to keep the momentum going. Once people think ‘we’re there. I don’t need to do anything’, then of course we’re back where we were.”

Recently the Federal Government made public its desire for sporting organisations to have gender equity and a 50-50 split on boards. That’s where the Golf Leaders Network becomes a highly significant organization in itself as it encourages more leaders to emerge.

“It’s not just about us,” says Kember. “It’s creating the environment for the next generation.

That’s what motivates me in this space. If we don’t make some inroads now, how do we every make improvement down the track and how do young woman look at the environment and say ‘yes, I want to do that’. They’ll only do that if they can see other women who have done it.”