Scotland’s Freemasons have opened their premises to women for meetings and ceremonies for the first time, in a move intended to distance the organisation from its image as a male-only “old boy network”.
The Grand Lodge of Scotland, which has been exclusively male since 1736, has signed an agreement with the Order of Women Freemasons allowing its members to use Masonic buildings.
The arrangement does not permit women to join the Grand Lodge of Scotland. Both organisations will remain single-sex bodies, with separate membership.
William Semple, the Grand Lodge’s grand secretary, said joining the Council for Freemasonry in Great Britain had helped challenge perceptions of the organisation.
“Before we became members of the Council, there was a real myth that we were part of an old boy network, a male-only club,” he said.
“This has gone a long way to dispelling that situation or that rumour. We have male-only lodges and female lodges, but we work very closely together.”
Mr Semple, a former Tayside Police detective superintendent, said the decision to make Masonic lodges available to women had improved relations between the groups.
“We make premises, masonic lodges, available to women Freemasons to hold their meetings. It has brought everything closer together and cleared the atmosphere to quite a great extent,” he said.
Alexander Moncrieff, Scotland’s grand master mason, said the organisation had offered the use of its buildings to a women’s Masonic group in the Lothians.
The group is considering holding its annual meeting at Freemasons’ Hall in Edinburgh, an arrangement Mr Moncrieff described as “wonderful”.
He said there was no prospect of women becoming members of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, adding: “We are happy to be single-sex organisations and that’s how we intend to be.”
Mr Moncrieff said the organisation believed men and women could naturally choose to spend time in single-sex groups.
The Grand Lodge of Scotland has also joined the Council for Freemasonry in Great Britain as it seeks to attract new members. The organisation lowered its membership age from 21 to 18 two years ago and has begun advertising at galas, fêtes, markets and community events.
Its notable members have included King George VI, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Grand Lodge of England already shares venues with the Order of Women Freemasons and takes part in joint open days and university freshers’ fairs. However, the two branches have stated that neither will admit members of the opposite sex.
