The imagined importance of men's only institutions
As a prominent men's club in London meets to discuss including women, I ask myself if we really care
It’s a running joke in England, that if one were to compile an idea about it from American films and TV shows, we’re a country with posh accents, we use red phone boxes to make phonecalls even though everyone knows they are now glorified latrines for squirrels and drunks, we have an unholy obsession with tea (that one may be partly true), we love the Royals (not in my name), most of us live in cutesy cottages or enormous apartments off the Thames in London despite earning the present day salary of a chimney sweep, and that we use words such as golly, gosh, kerfuffle, shenanigans.
While it may be understandable to take umbrage at some of it, occasionally something happens in England that reminds me that parts it haven’t evolved much beyond the era of Mary Poppins.
Currently, there’s a whole kerfuffle around the Garrick Club in London, an elite private member’s club, that only admits men. Apparently, after their membership list was leaked, they’ve held an ‘emergency’ committee to discuss whether or not women should be allowed to be members. It isn’t illegal in the UK to have single gender clubs, but in the Garrick’s case, it is deeply problematic.
Part of this is because a significant number of members are men of incredible influence and power. The optics therefore, of these men from industries of politics to finance, all bandying together to network and guff, is not good, particularly since many of the institutions they belong to are accused of being old boy’s networks. And, there is no smoke without fire, as evidenced by the withdrawal of membership of several High Court judges, the cabinet secretary and the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, who presumably sensed that the jig was up once the list came out.
While there have been members internally who have campaigned for women to be allowed to join (with apparently no success), it has taken public shaming to have a definitive conversation about it. Some of this – it should be added – isn’t borne out of altruism and doing the right thing, but concern that if the club doesn’t widen its membership base, they may end up in financial straits when they inevitably aren’t able to recruit younger and newer members.
I have been wondering though – if they do change their rules, what woman genuinely wants to join this club? Currently, you can visit if you’re a woman, but ONLY if you’re accompanied by a man the entire time you’re there, lest you fall prey to your feminine urges and festoon the toilets with tampons or eavesdrop on manly conversations that aren’t suitable for delicate female ears.
Apparently the historian Dame Mary Beard has visited and has said that she would love to be a member. Now I love Mary, but it begs the question: what woman under the age of 50 would want to join this club?
It’s an important question to ask, not just because gender equality (not that that’s remotely is what is happening here when an institution is operating from a place of damage control versus genuinely giving a toss about women) isn’t just about ticking a box marked ‘women’. It’s because women aren’t a monolith, and there are generational differences that extend to our capacity for micro-aggressions around things such as sexism and racism.
As we all should have learned from the tempestuous inner wranglings around International Women’s Day a few years ago, when left unchecked, the women box always defaults to white women. I’ve witnessed many events where companies thought it was enough to have a woman (singular) on their panels, and that woman almost always tended to be white.
When I’d get asked to take part by my company, correction, begged, a key part of the ask was because they needed the ‘representation’. It’s strange how they only needed a specific type of representation at a specific time of year, and never managed to graduate that thought into action, that perhaps hey, this lack of people to ask for International Women’s Day was indicative of a year-round representation problem.
In the same way that the Garrick’s membership list currently veers towards white, male and elderly (as uncovered by The Guardian), I’d be surprised if the women’s list, when they are allowed in, doesn’t go much the same way.
People who do box ticking rarely look beyond the surface of things. For instance, if the club’s scope expands to include women, will it do anything to attract women of colour? Will it be able to, given that we have a representation and pipeline-to-seniority issue across many industries, in this specific demographic?
And if the club is not considering that (which I am willing to bet my feminist pantaloons they aren’t), isn’t it just replicating the problems of old, where an elite few, mostly white people will gather to sit in their armchairs, discussing matters of the state, currying favour, negotiating slivers of nepotism where appropriate and keeping their sphere of influence safely tucked away in their little clique?
Perhaps all of this is a moot point. Most women my age do not primarily network in elite clubs, and there are different, diverse paths to power that don’t rest solely on us waiting on men letting down the ladder to their little treehouse. Most women I personally know would rather go off grid and grow their own lettuce, than beg or mask to themselves in order to fit around the egos of men, having already done a considerable amount of that in the early years of their careers.
My sincere hope, is that institutions that continue to resist the tide of change, and hold onto old, anachronistic ways of thinking and operating, will crumble and die. In fact, it’s not even a hope, it’s a prediction. I can’t think of anyone of my own generation who would want to join that establishment, let alone Zoomers.
The world has changed, and is changing. Clubs like the Garrick may have held onto their way of working for 192 years, but I am willing to bet that in as little as 30 years, most of its current members will be obsolete, and the generation that may have considered joining, will have already moved on to places that are not so rigidly defining. In fact, forget 30 years - it’s already happening now.
What of women-only clubs, should someone pipe up in the comments? Those exist as a counterweight to the overwhelming sexism women face in their industries and the general world, versus men’s clubs which uphold a power imbalance that still affects the lives of every single girl and woman alive on this Earth.
Not that I am necessarily a fan of women’s only institutions, however. There is something in me that resists being boxed in by something that only defines one aspect of myself, and I’ve spent plenty of time at my all girls school and girl groups in my 20s to know that cruelty doesn’t belong to a specific gender.
Besides, I’ve also learned that it takes people of all kinds to teach me about life, to further my career as well as me being able to reciprocate and return the favour. I have no wish for the kind of gatekeeping that places such as The Garrick seem to derive their power from. And I doubt that I am alone in this.
They caved! I’m hoping no one joins! Garrick Club votes to admit women after 193 years
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/601bfe13-26ae-40a4-9aae-7a92a3bdf22f?shareToken=9381f455fb72a0ba4cfb4112d6f99881
In America, a key divider of socioeconomic status and success is a college degree. there are now more women with college degrees than men overall and current enrollment and completion rates are skewed to women. As this continues, it seems as if men only institutions will have to accept women to survive. And women , as you, say, may not be interested.