Academic

Women Protest Separate and Unequal Grill Rooms at Tony Phoenix Golf Club

By Caitlin Borgmann

From the New York Times:

When the men of the Phoenix Country Club saw their feeding ways in peril, they did not tarry. Some sent nasty e-mail messages, hectored players on the fairway and, for good measure, urinated on a fellow club member?s pecan tree.

The targets of their ire were the women, and some men, who have dared to speak up against the club?s policy of forbidding women in the men?s grill room, a center of power dining in Phoenix.

…Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, does not belong to the club but has spoken there. (The McCain presidential campaign declined to comment on the separate dining rooms.) According to a 2007 club directory, Mr. McCain?s son, Andrew, is a member, along with scores of other notable Phoenix residents, including the rocker Alice Cooper.

The state attorney general’s office has issued a legal opinion stating that the club, although it is private, is in violation of Arizona’s anti-discrimination laws.

-Caitlin Borgmann

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on June 28, 2008 (boomark / email).