Appendix III
WOMEN’S FREEMASONRY
All the information in this Report relates to men’s Lodges of the Craft. There are women Freemasons, but they are under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of the Honourable Fraternity of Ancient Freemasons, an exclusively female movement which emerged in 1913.
The 42/44 Lodges of the women’s Fraternity are in almost every respect a mirror image of their male counterparts. They observe the same protocol, set out in the four hundred pages of the Supreme Grand Chapter Regulations; they progress through the ranks in the same way as do the men. According to a recent article ‘They take pride in emulating the men exactly’ (New Society, 18 Oct. 1985, p.94). Nevertheless, their Lodges are not recognised by the United Grand Lodge. Indeed, the fourth of the ‘Basic Principles for Grand Lodge Recognition’ specifically states:
That membership of the Grand Lodge and individual Lodges shall be exclusively of men: and that each Grand Lodge shall have no Masonic intercourse of any kind with mixed Lodges or bodies which admit women to membership. (Infonnation for the Guidance of Members of the Craft, 1985, p.3)
However, would-be members of the Fraternity (according to an article in The Times, 17 June 1985) must get their husband’s agreement before they are considered for membership. If this is correct, since many who belong to the Honourable Fraternity are those whose husbands are Freemasons too, a degree of acceptance, if not approval, must exist.
As regards the "mixed" Lodges, there is at present no information to hand but according to the New Society article the Honourable Fraternity itself ‘grew from the co-masons, a mixed off-shoot of the men’s movement... [and] rapidly became single sex’.