Dear Ladies,
 |
| Martha Burk who got death threats |
How
have you allowed America
Notorious
for its racial prejudice and sexist views it has been changing at a snails pace
that is the antithesis of the current century. This is particularly appalling
considering that its membership includes some of the richest men in the world
like Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
Home
of The Masters that has just been played this championship began life as the August National
Invitation Tournament. Even its founders, amateur champion Bobby Jones and banker
Clifford Roberts had misgivings about giving the tournament its current name.
It had hardly started when Roberts proposed the change.
Jones felt this was too presumptuous, but five years later Roberts got his way.
Other words for presumptuous are arrogant, egotistical,
insolent and cocksure and the club’s male members that have been running it have
certainly lived up to these unenviable characteristics.
Ironically Tiger Woods, who has just won his fifth Master’s
title, would never have been allowed to hit a single shot on the course in its earlier
years. As an African American he would only have qualified to have been a
caddie. Up to 1983 competitors were compelled to use an Augusta Club caddie and
these were traditionally all African American.
In 1975 one of the club’s worst prejudices began to crumble
when Lee Elder became the first African American to be invited to compete in
the championship.
But the club still had a women problem: How to go on
keeping them out. With millionaires, and billionaires as members their mothers,
wives and other female members of their families were evidently too subservient
to their Masters to call them out for their blatant sexism at
It was left to Martha Burk, a syndicated columnist and
women’s rights activist to stir things up among the chauvinist pigs in their
cosy Augusta
In 2002 she clashed with the then Chairman William “Hootie”
Johnson. He responded by telling the world unashamedly that Augusta
She failed in her initial attempt to get the club to accept
women as members, when she was refused a permit to protest at the gates during
the 2003 Masters.
Her luck changed later, however. Two gender discrimination
law suites brought by her organisation, The Women on Wall Street Project,
against companies associated with Augusta
Presumably if you treat women badly
at your club you more than likely do the same in your company.
 |
| Condoleezza Rice |
Burk had to contend with death threats and being called all
kinds of names like man hater and lesbian. This did not deter her. She won. Her
efforts evidently embarrassed the Augusta Board of Directors into changing
their admission policy on women. Grudgingly in 2012 they invited Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State in the Bush
administration and Darla Moore, the former president of the private investment firm Rainwater Inc
that was founded by her husband Richard, to become members.
They were more or less forced to invite “Ginni” Rometty to
become a member after she became Chief Executive of IBM, one of the main
sponsors of The Masters.
The
men at the top of this stuffy 300 member club could then congratulate
themselves on how well they treated women. After all what more could anybody
ask for now that they had three female members?
Yet the Masters still did little to
encourage woman once things had settle down after Burk’s attack.
For some reason or other the current Chairman Fred Ridley
announced a pathetic sop to them that did nothing to eliminate the Club’s clear
female prejudice.
The Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championships would be
held just before this year’s Masters. This he claimed was to “inspire greater
interest and participation in the women’s game.”
It fell rather flat when he added that the Club was not
contemplating holding a tournament for women similar to The Masters.
The winner of this year’s event received $2-million for the
first time. But the way things are no women will ever win any money at Augusta
It is particularly deplorable that so many leaders of
industry should have thought it was okay to prevent people from playing just
because they had the wrong skin colour and that women could not be members for
being…. women.
These men proved that in spite of their lofty positions
they were not nearly responsible enough to be in a so called “Land of the
free.” And I can’t think it can be much fun being one of so few women among all
those chauvinist pigs. It’s mucky in there.
Regards,
Jon
P.S. One of the Club strange
idiosyncrasies involves the green jacket that is presented to every Masters winner.
They are tailor made for each winner. Then they are only allowed to keep it for
a year before returning it to the club for safe keeping in a special green
jacket store room. It seems they can’t trust their winners to look after them
on a permanent basis. Nothing could be more terrible than if one got into the
wrong hands and a tramp was seen rummaging through rubbish on the side of a
road while wearing one of those hallowed garments.
