Augusta National is a very powerful men-only club

Richard Lapchick, director with the Institute for Diversity and Ethics In Sport at University of Central Florida, said men-only clubs are fading as professional sports embrace diversity, but change is slow.

"I think you are going to see a lesser amount of them in the future, but unless someone puts the spotlight with a club, nobody is going change because they prefer things the direction they are," he said. "For a couple weeks, [the media] is currently talking about Augusta National, as well as the other 50 weeks, the club's policy continues."

Augusta's chairman dodged the prickly issue of women's membership Wednesday, saying it was an individual matter.

"Well, as continues to be the case, whenever discount golf clubs real question is asked, all issues of membership are now and also have historically undergone in which you deliberation of members," Billy Payne said. "That statement remains accurate; it remains my statement."

Critics say Augusta and also other men-only golf sets tend to be than merely places to tee with the guys. They're places of economic for corporate elite, where connections are manufactured and deals are brokered.

"The no-girls-allowed rule keeps women from accessing that power where they are able to do business and rise in professional development and make their very own power networks," said Veronica Arreola, assistant director of the Center for Research on Females and Gender at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

The idea of clubs as power hubs is becoming so entrenched in corporate culture that women's groups have hosted clinics to train the sport to women for them to hold their own for the green, Arreola said.

Exactly the same forms of discussions Taylormade Rocketballz Irons aren't necessarily happening in women's book clubs or with the local Curves gym, the ubiquitous franchise marketed to women.

"Million-dollar deals are certainly not taking at Curves, but they are heading down at clubs," said Terry O'Neill, president of NOW, that has men on its board and among its membership.

"The world turns on human connections; when power brokers hang together, they actually do business together. It is actually a big barrier for women to become excluded from a place like Augusta that is so well-known internet marketing the cause of power-brokering opportunities. That's really different from sweating side-by-side on treadmills."

Activists the Augusta National controversy shows gender discrimination is taken more lightly than racial discrimination.

"If this became the 1st black male CEO of IBM, and that he has not been permitted to join, IBM wouldn't normally also be considering remaining a sponsor or having some other executives at the health club," said Burk, the previous NOW president, who made Augusta's policy a national issue in 2003. "Because it's sex discrimination, they are empowered to ignore that or treat it as being a lesser evil."

Several states, including New York and California, have "public accommodation" laws that say no one can be excluded Ping G20 irons from private establishments that sell food towards the public or show films, exhibitions or athletic teams -- or places whose operations affect commerce "among the several states" -- like clubs where conferences over lunch might result in corporate mergers.

"Of course most people are entitled to a peer group that they enjoy," Burk said. "That's not the same as keeping out those who are qualified and must be a part of precisely what is essentially an enterprise club, for reasons which have absolutely nothing to use anything except an immutable characteristic such as race and gender."