The old boy’s club of Augusta National stared down decades of pressure to open their doors to female members. Ten years ago, Martha Burk of the National Council of Women’s Organizations led a sustained yet fruitless push to get the snooty golf club to allow another gender into its doors, and the New York Times, under then-executive editor Howell Raines, dedicated a barrage of front-page stories to the topic.

Bad publicity didn’t change Augusta’s mind, as had happened in 1990 when the club invited its first African-American member after an Alabama golf club was excoriated for its whites-only admissions policies.

But suddenly, Augusta, home of the annual Masters golf tournament, has finally broken down, allowing its first two female members: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina financier Darla Moore, who Fortune magazine called on a 1997 cover “The Toughest Babe in Business.” Continue reading...

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