RISE OF WOMEN-ONLY CLUBS

THE HOTTEST ARRIVAL on the New York social scene of late is women’s only club The Wing. Launched by Audrey Gelman – aka Lena Dunham’s best friend and the inspiration for Marnie in Girls – it’s billed as a home-fromhome, a girls-only playground, with a library, blow-dries and a bar. Good news, good uplifting name. I will be knocking on its door next time I’m over in New York, with a special interest in a women’s group with its own permanent home. In London, I run Trouble (troubleclub.com), the women’s club that pops up in odd little spaces in London’s Soho with speakers like Mary Beard, attended by a regular crowd who make friends while I mix the gin and tonics.

There’s something special about meeting like-minded women in real life. I think of it as a sort of Bechdel test (a benchmark for stories and books that feature two female leads who talk about something other than men). I deem a Trouble event a success if we don’t talk love lives, kids or even feminism, but instead discuss politics, business, beliefs. Why do gender when it’s implicit: we are a women’s club.

The Wing will have its own vibe, so too Verity in Toronto and the many other more informal and often industry-focused groups around the world that are popping up. That The Wing has its own New York fortress (a brightly lit loft off Gramercy Park) makes a statement. Go online and it’s rough-and-tumble and kind of crass: in one corner, stomach-churning self-promotion, in another, Twitter wars where women’s issues are a top target for trolling. But when you have a real-life regular space, stuff happens, connections are made and there’s a real engagement, which means you become the club bore if you brag or bitch too much.

But it will be interesting to see how long The Wing will fly. A long time, I hope, but there’s something peculiar about women’s clubs: they often last only a decade or so. Old London gentlemen’s clubs like the Garrick or the Savile have hundreds of years of history, and sons following fathers into them and tucking into grouse and club port. They don’t like change. But the old working women’s clubs are gone, collectives come and go. This isn’t a bad thing: as women progress towards equality, their clubs reinvent themselves.

Trouble is doing that too. This year, we will spread our wings into Europe with a weekend in Budapest for our members. Who knows, we might even get to New York. Joy Lo Dico is a writer forthe Evening Standard

Members’ clubs for girls only are enjoying a resurgence. But will they last, asks Joy Lo Dico Women’s CLUBS only last a decade or so. As women PROGRESS towards equality, their clubs reinvent THEMSELVES