Executives, Professionals, and the Morality of Single-Sex Clubs

Abstract

In recent years private single-sex clubs have been subjected to a great deal of moral criticism. They have been condemned as sexist, as illegitimately withholding social and professional benefits from the sex that they exclude, and (in their masculine form) as the remnants of a morally bankrupt patri archal system that should finally be swept away. Unfortunately for such clubs, the sound and fury that is currently directed at them signifies some thing rather than nothing. In Britain, legal steps have been taken to require that if such clubs admit persons of the excluded sex as Associate members, then the Associate members must receive the same club benefits as the Full members.1 More drastically, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, the Scottish Tourism, Culture, and Sport Minister, proposed that single-sex golf clubs be disbarred from hosting the British Open, while the all-male Augusta Nation al Golf Club in the United States has been subject to considerable public pressure to admit female members.2,3 Even single-sex clubs that are not so clearly in the public eye have been subjected to pressure to change. For ex ample, the all-male Kate Kennedy Club of St. Andrews University (dedi cated to maintaining the traditions of the university and the town, improving town-gown relations, and raising money for charity) has been criticized in the Scottish Parliament for its "discriminatory" membership policies.4 Moreover, the moral disapproval of such clubs is not only restricted to their traditional opponents on the political left. In 2001, for example, Iain Dun can Smith, the then leader of the Conservative Party, refused an invitation toj?in the all-male Car lton Club on the grounds that the membership of this