Martha Burk

Martha Burk (born October 18, 1941) is an American political psychologist, feminist, and former Chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations.

Career and personal

Burk currently runs the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women's Organizations, which started the Women on Wall Street project to investigate sex discrimination at companies associated with Augusta National. She is a syndicated columnist, and serves as Money Editor for Ms. Magazine. She also sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy.

She authored Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It, published Scribner in 2005, and more recently Your Money and Your Life: The High Stakes for Women Voters in '08 and Beyond (2008).

Burk served as Senior Policy Advisor for Women's Issues to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson from 2007-2010, when he left office due to term limitations.

Her husband is Ralph Estes, an academic whose research focuses on corporate accountability.

Controversy with Augusta National Golf Club

Burk is widely known for a disagreement beginning in 2002 with William "Hootie" Johnson, then chairman of Augusta National Golf Club, over admission of female members to Augusta National. Burk contended that hosting the Masters Tournament at a male-only club, constituted sexism because 15% of the club's membership were CEOs, many of them Fortune 500 CEOs. Johnson characterized Burk's approach as "offensive and coercive", and despite efforts to conflate the issue with sexism and civil rights, Johnson maintained the issue had to do with the rights of any private club.

For her part, Burk — whose childhood nickname was also Hootie — was "called a man hater, anti-family, lesbian, all the usual things." For his part, Johnson was portrayed as a Senator Claghorn type — that is, a blustery defender of all things Southern.

Following the discord, two club members resigned, Thomas H. Wyman, a former CEO of CBS, and John Snow, when President George W. Bush nominated him to serve as Secretary of the Treasury. Pressure on corporate sponsors led the club to broadcast the 2003 and 2004 tournaments without commercials.

By 2011, no woman had been admitted to Augusta National. The controversy was discussed by the International Olympic Committee when re-examining whether golf meets Olympic criteria of a "sport practiced without discrimination with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play." In August 2012, the Augusta National board of directors extended membership to two women.

Selected bibliography

• Burk, Martha; Hartmann, Heidi I. (10 June 1996). "Beyond the gender gap: what must the women's movement do to recover?". The Nation. The Nation Company. 262 (23): 18.