pub, dinner, cinema and it snowballs and you meet other people.’
‘I have always had really close female friends as well as male friends so I have never thought about [male-only groups]. I don’t change my behaviour between the two ...’
A female participant also said: ‘I have always joined groups, I like meeting people and people from different backgrounds. I quite like being among people who are not from the same socio-economic or education background. I have always liked different groups of people because they give you, and you give them, different things in life.’ In contrast, another female participant relied much more on her network of work colleagues and was unwilling to join other groups that might reduce the time she spent with them. ‘I’m not a joiner … I spend so much time at work that I just don’t want to. It is really bad, [as] I like meeting new people, I like different things and I do want to go out there and do different things. But I spend so much time at work that I feel that I would be cheating myself out of my own free time. I do have a good social network at work and I really do get on with the people I work with. Two or three of them are starting to get into my core group of people. People join the team and leave the team and there are a lot of different personalities there.’ All of this was familiar territory. It was, however, when we moved the conversation on to the subject of single-sex groups that issues arose. Among some of the men in the groups in particular, there was a strong reluctance to believe in (or admit to) the attraction of all-male groups. One commented:
There was a distinct sense of political correctness at work in the groups with men fearing, perhaps, being labelled as chauvinist if they claimed to want to be more in the company of men rather than mixed-sex groups. When this ‘correctness was challenged’, however, some rather more revealing sentiments were expressed. One said: ‘I don’t think I consciously do it [seek out male-only groups] it just seems to work out that way.’ Another spoke of his bonds with other players in his hockey team: ‘That is exactly what we have in the hockey club, really. I guess it serves some sort of purpose. You play sport, you go off and socialise and drink together and have this slightly exclusive overtly masculine bond. The idea is that you do that so when you come to play you give a bit more for each other because you have been doing whatever it is the night before.’ There was much less reluctance, however, among the women participants to recognise the value of all-female bonds:
‘It’s bravado and that is not necessarily the bond that you are looking for.’
‘It is not just a case of all liking the same things, it is not about that. It is really the core values in those people that you respect and you like and the characteristics. These are all women. I have a lot of male friends as well as a lot of female friends, but this core is female.’
Others agreed and suggested that this need for ‘being with just lads’ was outdated. One participant said:
› The Future of Freemasonry: A report by the Social Issues Research Centre 2012
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