Dark ages in America

In 1920, after generations of struggle, women finally won the right to vote in this country.

Since then, women have waged an uphill battle to be recognized as equal to men.

In 1931, 11 years after women won suffrage, the Augusta National Golf Club, a refuge of the hyper-elite and home to the Master's Tournament, opened its doors and allowed only rich, important men into its club.

For more than 80 years it carried on that tradition, refusing to allow women to don the green member's jacket.

Then, on Monday, with a fanfare of screaming headlines, Augusta finally invited its first two women members – former Secretary of State and current Stanford professor Condoleezza Rice and banking magnate and philanthropist Darla Moore.

The media, politicians, celebrity golfers and even women, who campaigned to allow female members, applauded the decision.

But we shouldn't be congratulating Augusta, we should be criticising them even more forcefully.

Moreover, we should feel insulted that this bastion of power, wealth and privilege appears to believe its symbolic gesture somehow absolves its misogynistic past.

Lest we forget, this is the same club that didn't admit African American members until 1990.

As for Rice and Moore, two powerful, self-made women, perhaps it would have been better if they refused the offer of green jackets.

After all, it seems a fairly hollow gesture in comparison to their previous achievements – one hardly thinks Condoleezza Rice is going to look back at the day she was accepted to Augusta's old boys club as the crowning achievement of her life.

We're astonished that Augusta thinks its gesture is so grand it deserves the nation's and the world's approval.

In this day and age, almost a century after American women were finally allowed to cast a ballot for the first time, a token golf club membership is too little, too late.

It is 2012.

We should be ashamed of ourselves ... and embarrassed.