The National Council of Women's Organizations in the US has already raised a big enough hullabaloo to keep the pot boiling, and is sure to increase its protests. So who needs the UN to get into the act anyway?

William "Hootie" Johnson, the club chairman, is probably unaware of the existence of that international convention designed to save women from the kind of prejudice that his group is so keen to perpetuate that it's just been announced he's willing to forgo millions of dollars' worth of commercial sponsorship for next year's Masters rather than give in to the protesters and open the Augusta club's membership roll to women. The National is so exclusive that there are only 300 members; only 10 of these are black men.

The women protesters against what they regard as blatant gender discrimination hoped earlier this year to enlist the strong support of Tiger Woods, who is of mixed-race parentage (black father, Asian mother). However, the world's best and richest golfer offered little more than his sympathy and a tut-tut. (He's not known for his involvement in politics, of whatever kind. For which he should not be faulted. Too many celebrities board a popular hobbyhorse with too little knowledge or preparation for what they may be getting themselves into.)

The day that Hootie announced he was telling Citigroup, the big financial conglomerate; Coca-Cola and IBM that the Augusta club would dispense with their advertising dollars to support television coverage for the 2003 Masters -- which puts CBS, the contractual broadcast network, in a bind yet to be resolved -- the UN was electing government-sponsored experts on gender issues to its Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

This 23-person panel monitors and oversees the conduct of member states toward their women citizens, which in too may cases is not pretty. Hootie Johnson and the guys at Augusta are saints compared to what some national leaders allow to go on. As has often been reported, young girls in Saudi Arabia were forced back to die in a burning building when they ran for safety without pausing to pull up their veils; Saudi women still are forbidden to get behind the wheel of a car.

Where its treatment of women is concerned, the UN itself, alas, is not simon pure, despite many good intentions.

A recent report by the Office of Internal Oversight Services, which audits the multifaceted international bureacracy, stated that while it had uncovered no regular pattern of prejudice toward women employees more needed to be done to improve gender equality.

"More attention needs to be given to recruiting and promoting women at the higher levels and to counteract the rising separation rate of women from the Organization," the OIOS auditors said. This "separate rate" referred to the increasing numbers of mid-level and other female staff who have left for jobs elsewhere or to retire while they believed their pensions were still reasonably secure. (The UN pension fund, like others in the private sector, has suffered in the market downturn.) Some women staff are reported to have opted to leave the service even though offered a job upgrade.

The UN has in place a system for handling staff complaints and grievances, but it is slow-moving and not always perceived to be even-handed. OIOS said the handling of gender discrmination complaints needed to be improved and strengthened and the Panel on Discrimination and Other Grievances made more effective.

Kofi Annan, who has sworn that his goal is gender parity in the bureaucracy, including at the top levels, but has fallen far short of attaining it -- he recently replaced Mary Robinson with a male Brazilian as head of humanitarian affairs -- was advised by OIOS to issue a bulletin articulating UN policy on gender discrimination.

Even as Robinson, the former President of Ireland, departed (at her own request and after extending for a year in response to Annan's own appeal), the Secretary General took the unusual step of naming an ombudsman to act as a watchdog for all staff, men and women. She is Patricia Durrant, the former UN ambassador of Jamaica, who has been given the rank of assistant secretary general.

Taking heed of the IOS report, Annan again emphasized that all allegations of discrimination would be promptly addressed.

New or, in the case of three of them, re-elecfed members of the UN committee on discrimination are Cornelis Flinterman (the Netherlands), Huguette Gnancadja (Benin), Meriem Belmihoub-Zerdan (Algeria), Arva Kuenyehia (Ghana), Krisztina Morvai (Hungary), Salma Khan (Bangladesh), Pramila Patten (Mauritius), Victoria Popescu Sandru (Romania), Dubravka Simonovic (Croatia), Fumiko Saiga (Japan), Naela Mohamed Gabr (Egypt) and Rosario Manaro (the Philippines).

Although the names of all members, including those already serving, were put forward by their governments, they are considered experts on the subject able to act within their own right without governmental instruction. That sounds very nice, of course, but any member who opposed his or her national government's position on a sensitive issue probably need not expect its support for any re-election bid.