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Martha still motivated
Undaunted Burk plans to take protest corporate
Posted: Sunday April 13, 2003 8:41 PM
NEW YORK (AP) -- Martha Burk is ready for the next phase of her mission to get a female member into Augusta National.
Burk hopes to resume her campaign within two weeks, targeting corporate leaders who are members of the all-male golf club that hosts the Masters, she said Sunday from Atlanta.
Burk, head of the National Council of Women's Organizations, hopes to set up individual meetings to urge them to take a stand against what she considers sex discrimination at Augusta National.
"The club needs to open its doors to women, but the larger goal, and it has been for months, has always been to make sex discrimination as unacceptable in the halls of power as race discrimination is," Burk said.
"If it were a race issue, the corporations would not have stonewalled for eight months. We have to elevate sex discrimination to the same level of scrutiny."
Burk called her protest at Augusta National on Saturday a success because "the American people heard our message," even though the turnout was small and protesters were confined to a vacant lot where club members could not see them.
Burk said the next phase is a "corporate accountability campaign," which she insists could be even more effective now that it appears the club doesn't plan to admit a female member any time soon.
"I don't think they can remain silent any longer," she said, referring to club members. "The choice is too stark."
And Burk plans to keep fighting, no matter how long it takes to achieve her goal.
"We're prepared to not only keep going but to expand this to a much larger discussion of corporate America's treatment of women overall," she said.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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