Buck, I would also suggest this (and focusing strictly on American sports):
There's always a hierarchy in terms of which sports attract which athletes, at least in the US. It's why we suck at soccer despite the country's general prowess in global athletics. Football, basketball, and baseball are the coolest sports here, and generally attract the attention of the most naturally gifted athletes. Soccer is further down, and golf further down still. #HotTake: Peak Tiger and Dustin Johnson get raved about as golf athletes, but only because they weren't athletic enough to cut it at the elite level in sports that the best athletes gravitate toward.
On the girls'/women's side the hierarchy is slightly different, but the best female athletes still gravitate to other sports while golf serves the same niche it does for boys/men: essentially a game that allows less-gifted athletes to have a modicum of success by competing against others who weren't athletic enough to play a cooler and therefore more popular sport. And I resemble that comment, by the way, as I would love to still be able to play pickup basketball and do anything more than spread the floor, but I'm not athletic enough. I'm not much of a golfer either, but I'm good enough to do the equivalent of playing pickup games at the local rec center, which is all I wish I could get out of basketball without worrying I might catastrophically injure myself in the process.
So what does all this have to do with why women don't play golf? Well, fewer young women play sports growing up than young men, and fewer still participate with the same vigor that the average boys' sports athletes bring to the table. And so there are more openings on the soccer, basketball, and track teams, and thus less demand among actively-inclined girls to play golf growing up. I would argue that this is all clearly true, but here comes another #HotTake:
With fewer girls introduced to the game in their youth, the result is that fewer adult women play golf. And while some express interest, and guys like Tom Doak see women as a group ripe for participation growth, I just don't see it ever coming to fruition. What's going to attract a 20-something or 30-something active woman like my wife to the game? She's an athlete whose who was a highly competitive lacrosse and soccer player growing up, ran club-level track in college, and then became a regionally elite female road racer, and who also plays recreational volleyball and soccer almost year-round. She has enough money to play golf if she wants to, and she's the type of active and outdoor-oriented person that would seem like a potential golfer on the surface. She even loves hanging out with her obnoxious husband, an avid golfer, and frequently enjoys Topgolf. And yet, as she's starting to question her long-term strategy for staying active and fit as she hits what's likely the 4th or 5th "k" in her competitive running career, she's not gravitating toward actual golf at all - a game that takes 4+ hours to play in most circumstances, requires tons of equipment and practice just to get started in, and is generally dominated by old white men from a participation standpoint. She'd much rather hike, bike, or just go to the gym that her workplace provides for free and be finished with her workout and on to the next thing in an hour or so. She's uncomfortable with the game's environmental impact. She doesn't feel welcomed by the game's culture. She doesn't want to be told what to wear or how to behave. And yeah, she's just one woman, and a uniquely cantankerous one at that - how else would she deal with me all the time? But she's also not all that different from the median Millennial chick who just isn't interested in golf's bullshit, and I doubt that trend will change with future generations. Plenty of women already play golf, and the golf industry keeps telling us that women's participation is slowly growing. But all numbers I can find point to total stagnation at about a 4-5% women's participation rate since 1998, despite a few ups and downs along the way. Meanwhile, women's and girls' participation in sports overall has grown about 600% since Title IX was implemented. I just don't think a popularity boom in women's golf is coming, ever. And I don't think that's a #HotTake at all.