(CNN) -- Well, look at that. The boys at Augusta National Golf Club finally came into the 20th century, only 12 years after the millennium. With the admission of Condoleezza Rice and businesswoman Darla Moore into their previously male-only club, one more gender barrier has been cracked. But it remains to be seen whether it has been truly broken. Augusta National was forced to open to black men way back in 1990, when a controversy erupted at the Shoal Creek Country Club in Alabama. The club was all white, and PGA tour sponsors balked. So the PGA changed the rules -- meaning clubs that discriminated on the basis of race or gender would no longer be allowed to host a tournament.
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For 10 years, Martha Burk and others fought to get Augusta golf club to accept women
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Burk: Through decade of protests, taunts, CEOs have fought bitterly to ban women
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She says the more important club is the corporate boardroom, where women are scarce
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Burk is relieved, but now the struggle is to get women into the top ranks of businesses
Had we not changed the conversation about sex discrimination and kept it front and center every year at tournament time -- while behind the scenes facilitating $80 million in legal settlements on behalf of women working at companies whose @placeholder were club members -- the issue would have quietly died away.