Martha Burk, the chairwoman of the National Council of Women's Organizations, says the controversy that developed with the Augusta National was unexpected. SPECIAL

Martha Burk, a privileged and powerful woman in her own right, has been investing her free time in the Augusta National for three months.

Ms. Burk has never been to Augusta. She doesn't play golf. The 60-year-old grandmother's free time - both spare and unpaid - is spent trying to get a private men's golf club to end its exclusion of female members.

It is not at all how the volunteer chairwoman of the nation's only coalition of nonprofit feminist groups planned to spend her summer - much less her fall, winter and, very likely, spring. It's not how Ms. Burk and the coalition she leads - operating out of one small room just a few blocks from the White House - expected to become famous.

But when Augusta National and Masters Tournament Chairman Hootie Johnson defiantly rebuffed Ms. Burk's overture to discuss opening the club's membership ranks to women, she mobilized a cause that she says is backed by her National Council of Women's Organizations.

"This is pretty much taking all of my time," Ms. Burk said of the added burden on her volunteer post. "Since Hootie Johnson, it's been more than 40 hours a week because of all the media."

Make no mistake, this is Ms. Burk's fight. She may have the expressed support of the 160 groups and their members who fall under the NCWO umbrella, but it is Ms. Burk who is almost single-handedly standing up to arguably the most powerful and visible men's club in America. While her member groups continue the constant women's movement on a variety of substantive fronts, it is Ms. Burk who personifies the debate to get a female member at the Augusta National.

Why, Ms. Burk is asked, is she fighting so hard on what her critics consider a luxury issue? How will adding one woman - likely a woman of privilege and power - further women's rights as a whole? What does the women's movement gain by getting inside the Augusta National?

"Well, it's just one more barrier that comes down," Ms. Burk said. "Golf is notorious for discrimination against women. Not only barring them from membership, but in tee times and access to grill rooms and that sort of thing.

"But this is not about golf. This is about an institutional barrier to women that is emblematic to all the other ways that women are shut out of society still. I am getting letters and e-mails from women saying it reminds them of the glass ceiling - the pay gap, the not being able to get hired or promoted. This makes women mad on a variety of levels. So it goes far beyond just one membership and one club."

Her supporters agree. Jane Smith, the CEO for Business and Professional Women, USA, admits "We're not going to ask for a holiday on this one," but she says the impact remains considerable.

"We're talking about a privileged activity and a lot of privileged folks," said Ms. Smith, whose constituents are the very businesswomen pressed against the glass ceilings. "Of course, it will have waves of impact on other things. I want my women on that golf course. It is a place of major business, major decisions that make America. I want my women there. They have an absolute right to be in a place like that."

Augusta National Golf Club Chairman Hootie Johnson rebuffed Martha Burk's letter to discuss opening membership to women. FILE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Making of a leader Who is Martha Burk?

"She's good-looking, sexy, fun, brilliant, tenacious, tough but soft, too," says her husband and activist partner, Ralph Estes. "I don't want to be the person she's mad at."

Ms. Burk's friends and colleagues call her a "coalition and consensus builder." She stands on principles, not partisanship. When black women leaders argued that Sojourner Truth should be included in a statue honoring suffragists in the Capitol Rotunda, Ms. Burk strongly supported their cause despite the strong objections of many of her NCWO member groups. She brought everyone together in the end.

"Without question she is our leader," said Ms. Smith, the Atlanta native whose advocacy group for working women is an NCWO member group. "Martha is very focused and very bottom line, but she is a gentlewoman in the way we talk about gentlemen in the South."

"She is always so inclusive and very honest," said Barbara Reynolds, a friend who met Ms. Burk when Ms. Reynolds was writing columns for USA Today. "You can't buy her off her mission or chase her off or scare her off."

Ms. Burk grew up in Tyler, Texas, in what she calls a "stable and safe family." The older sister of twin brothers, she was never pushed by her working parents into a stereotypical lifestyle.

"It was always expected that I would go to college in an era when that wasn't so common," she said. "In my family it was not are you going, it was where are you going."

In an era long before Title IX, Ms. Burk didn't have opportunities to play organized sports in school, so the best she could aspire to was cheering for the boys' teams.

"Everybody wanted to be a cheerleader back then," she said.

At 16, she skipped her last year of high school and went to the University of Houston. She was married and had the first of her two sons before she graduated in 1962. For the next 12 years, she did the "soccer mom thing," raising a family while earning a Masters degree and a Ph.D. in psychology, in addition to a minor in computer science, at the University of Texas-Arlington.

Her doctorate didn't stop one prospective employer from assessing her clerical skills with a typing test during the interview.

"It was hard to get a job in '74 as a woman," she said.

Ms. Burk worked as an "itinerant psychologist," putting out crisis fires in the Texas school system, and taught classes in college. On the side, she became a commercial success in the early computer era by writing software programs to handle the paperwork involved in special education and to automate the exams she was giving to large classes at Texas-Arlington.

She divorced after 25 years of marriage and moved to Wichita, Kan., for a change of pace. Her interest in the feminist movement had been piqued by a program she had been teaching in Texas to help underemployed and unemployed women with specialized skills and degrees to get back into their fields.

Ms. Burk joined the Wichita chapter of the National Organization for Women as a way to meet friends. It started a new calling.

As the site of one of the nation's few late-term abortion clinics, Kansas is a constant hotbed in the ongoing abortion wars. Ms. Burk became president of Wichita's NOW chapter, and with it came the mantle of spokeswoman for the abortion-rights movement. Her efforts got her onto the NOW national board.

Setting a course Ms. Burk's second husband is a kindred spirit. A fellow feminist, expert in social accounting and a former president of the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Mr. Estes joined Ms. Burk in marriage and social activism in Wichita.

"I can't say it was me or the circumstances, but it was like a flower opening up and blossoming," Mr. Estes said of his wife's budding devotion to the women's movement. "Something had always been there, but the opportunity to bring it forth had not presented."

With her software business on autopilot and her financial independence fulfilled, Ms. Burk became more and more a women's advocate. With her husband, she established a nonprofit organization in Washington, the Center for the Advancement of Public Policy. As president, she became a member of the NCWO.

The NCWO, originally called the Council of Presidents, was a loose-knit coalition of women's leaders established in 1983 as a reaction to two things - the election of President Reagan and the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment. The idea was to focus a broad spectrum of women's rights groups into a unified voice.

Ms. Burk became the NCWO's second chairwoman in 2000. As of now, about 160 member groups are under the NCWO umbrella. Member groups range from NOW to the YWCA to the Women's Sports Foundation to Planned Parenthood. The groups represent women of varying ages, income levels, career walks, races, ethnic backgrounds and religions.

"You get more bang for the buck if you're 160 groups rather than just one," Ms. Burk said. "Now we are a strong coalition, though we're not a rich coalition. Our wealth is not in money. It is in our numbers and our dedication to what we do."

Ms. Burk's job is to leverage the work of the groups and to try to maintain visibility. Never has it been higher than since the Augusta National brought Ms. Burk and her organization into the public spotlight over private rights vs. equal rights.

When Ms. Burk sent her letter to Augusta National in July, she says she hoped it would simply help reinforce the internal efforts of members such as Lloyd Ward, the president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, to get a woman added to the membership. Ms. Burk says she expected a simple "We're working on it" response.

Instead, she got Mr. Johnson's emphatic response, calling Ms. Burk's letter "offensive and coercive."

In a prepared statement released to the media, Mr. Johnson said, "We will not be bullied, threatened or intimidated. ... We do not intend to become a trophy in their display case."

"I was very surprised by Mr. Johnson's reaction," Ms. Burk said.

Getting attention Ms. Burk and her coalition have been fielding questions about the Augusta National's place on the priority list regarding women's rights. The critics have squawked: Why not help women oppressed in Afghanistan or tackle domestic violence?

Those issues, Ms. Burk says, along with pay equity, welfare reauthorization, Social Security privatization, child-care benefits, education opportunities and reproductive rights are being tackled by her member groups every single day. Among the top priorities on the current agenda is getting the United States to fall in line with all but three other nations (Afghanistan, Iran and the Sudan) and ratify the international women's "Bill of Rights" treaty, known as CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women).

Her essentially one-woman campaign against the Augusta National's exclusivity is just a footnote that happens to have captured the interest of the media.

"I would kill for this kind of publicity on my other issues," Ms. Burk says. "The press is just not as excited about welfare reform."

Public response Not everyone sees this as a fight against discrimination. The Masters Tournament sponsors (before they were dismissed by Mr. Johnson in August) and television partner, CBS, all deferred to the club's private rights separate from its Masters profile. Several media polls have indicated public support leaning to the side of the Augusta National, even among women who play golf.

Ms. Burk gets her share of hate mail reminiscent of the abortion-rights debate. "There's a lot of vitriol out there. I've been surprised by it," she said. "It's scary that so many, mostly men, still fear women and men being on an equal basis. It just doesn't seem like it ought to be that threatening."

Ms. Burk, however, is getting plenty of response from women wanting to make arrangements to be in Augusta during April to be ready to demonstrate their will to prompt change.

"If she marches (on the Augusta National), I'm going to march with her," said Ms. Reynolds, who has a syndicated column and radio talk show. "This issue is about all of us. This is symbolic of a lot of issues, amalgamated into one. It looks like a silk-stocking issue, but it's really a simple issue of equality."

Mr. Johnson and the Augusta National argue that the dispute has nothing to do with equality and is all about the right of a private club to remain private.

"It's not Martha I would be afraid of," said Ms. Smith, an Atlanta native whose Business and Professional Women boast 30,000 members. "It's the issue and what history will do with it."

Despite all the obstacles stacked against her on this issue and the Augusta National's resistance to change, Ms. Burk is convinced that her "just cause" will prevail.

MARTHA BURK

BORN: 1941, Tyler, Texas

RESIDENCE: Washington, D.C.

EDUCATION: B.A. in psychology, University of Houston, 1962; Masters in psychology and minor in computer science, University of Texas-Arlington, 1968; Ph.D. in experimental psychology, Texas-Arlington, 1972

FAMILY: Husband, Ralph Estes, former president of Texas chapter of ACLU; two sons from her first marriage, Ed Talley, 40, and Mark Talley, 37; four grandchildren (two boys, two girls)

CURRENT POSITIONS: Chairwoman of National Council of Women's Organizations; co-founder and president of the Center for Advancement of Public Policy; Wider Opportunities for Women board member; chairwoman of Legislative Task Force for the National Committee on Pay Equity

HOBBIES: Horse riding, barrel horse racing, scuba diving, skiing

FAST FACT: Her 34-foot trawler is named Alice Paul, after the famous suffragist whose incarceration and hunger strike helped generate public support that led to the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS

JUNE 12: Martha Burk, the chairwoman of the National Council of Women's Organizations, sends a letter to Augusta National Golf Club Chairman Hootie Johnson, asking him to open the club's membership to women now, "so that this is not an issue when the tournament is staged next year."

JULY 8: Mr. Johnson replies to Dr. Burk's letter with a terse, three-paragraph statement:

"As you are aware, Augusta National Golf Club is a distinctly private club and, as such, cannot talk about its membership and practices with those outside the organization.

"I have found your letter's several references to discrimination, allusions to the sponsors and your setting of deadlines to be both offensive and coercive.

"I hope you will understand why any further communication between us would not be productive."

JULY 9: The Augusta National issues a statement to the media about Dr. Burk's letter. Mr. Johnson says the club "will not be bullied, threatened or intimidated." The club says more than 1,000 rounds were played by women at the Augusta National last year, and it points out that Mr. Johnson invited the University of South Carolina women's golf team to play the course in May.

JULY 30: Citigroup, Coca-Cola, General Motors, IBM and the PGA Tour are all asked to suspend sponsorship or recognition of the Masters Tournament by the NCWO.

AUG. 30: The Augusta National announces that the telecast of the 2003 Masters Tournament will not include any commercials. Television sponsors Citigroup, IBM and Coca-Cola are informed that their participation is not required. "Augusta National is NCWO's true target," Mr. Johnson said. "It is therefore unfair to put the Masters media sponsors in the position of having to deal with this pressure."

SEPT. 18: Dr. Burk sends CBS a letter asking the network to not televise the 2003 Masters if the Augusta National "continues to discriminate against women by excluding them from membership."

SEPT. 19: CBS Sports President Sean McManus responds to the NCWO's letter, saying the network has no plans to drop its Masters telecast. To not televise it "would be a disservice to fans of this major championship," Mr. McManus says in his letter.

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.