Why UK gentlemen’s club the Garrick is accepting women for first time in nearly 200 years

London’s Garrick Club has finally voted to allow women to become members, 193 years after it first opened its doors.

The vote was passed at the end of a private meeting during which several hundred members spent two hours debating whether to permit women to join. In the end, almost 60% backed the move.

The Garrick, which is located in Covent Garden in the West End of London, has been under intense scrutiny since the Guardian published a list of about 60 names of the club’s most influential members.

They included the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, the secretary of state for levelling up, Michael Gove, the head of the spy agency MI6, Richard Moore, and Simon Case, who as cabinet secretary is the prime minister’s most senior policy adviser and the leader of nearly 500,000 civil servants. Case and Moore were among a number to resign their membership after the Guardian’s coverage.

The club’s management revealed previously it had received letters and emails from more than 200 members informing them that they would resign if the vote had gone against women.

What are gentlemen’s clubs?

Private social clubs with male-only membership, they were originally set up by men typically from Britain’s upper classes in the 18th century and onwards. The Garrick was founded in 1831. The original wave of such clubs were opened predominantly in the West End, which continues today: the area of St James’s is still referred to as “clubland”.

How does the membership system work?

It varies from club to club but typically membership is by election after at least two members formally nominate a person to join.

In the case of the Garrick, the admissions process is notoriously complex and slow, requiring names to be written in a red leather-bound book, seconded by two pages of signatures, before prospective members are invited in to dine at the club, and their nomination is discussed by committee members, with an opportunity for unpopular nominees to be blackballed.

What is the history of women’s membership at the Garrick?

In 2011, Hugh Bonneville proposed fellow actor Joanna Lumley for membership; his decision to write her name in the book of proposed candidates triggered such anger among some of the club’s 1,500 members that the page was ripped out from the nomination book. In 2015, the club voted to continue its policy of not admitting women as members, Although 50.5% voted in favour of allowing women to join, the club required a two-thirds majority before the rules could be changed.

Why are the rules on women’s membership at the Garrick about to change?

There has been a groundswell of support to admit women since the Guardian published details of the membership this year, revealing the club’s central position as a bulwark of the British establishment, featuring scores of leading lawyers, heads of publicly funded arts institutions, the head of the civil service and King Charles.

It is not men gathering in single-sex spaces that motivated such calls but rather the uniqueness of the Garrick with its powerful membership list casting an unflattering spotlight on Britain’s still very-male dominated establishment.

On Tuesday, after high-profile resignations and renewed scrutiny, the Garrick’s membership finally voted to allow women to become members, with 59.98% of votes in favour.

What will happen next?

It is unlikely there will be a sudden influx of women to the club, despite the vote. The membership process is notoriously complex and drawn out. However, it is possible that a number may be at least nominated in the short term.

Pro-women members have already drawn up a list of seven women they plan to nominate for membership: the classicist Mary Beard, the former home secretary Amber Rudd, the Channel 4 News presenter Cathy Newman, the Labour peer Ayesha Hazarika, the actor Juliet Stevenson, the chancellor of Coventry University Margaret Casely-Hayford, who also chairs the board for trustees at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, and the former appeals court judge Elizabeth Gloster, now a peer.