INCREASING social and financial pressures have forced many regional Victorian men's-only clubs to relax their rules and allow women to join.
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With the Sandhurst Club to vote on the issue tomorrow night, The Advertiser spoke to four regional Victorian clubs about their transition from gentlemen's clubs to "twin-gender" clubs.
Clubs in Ballarat, Geelong, Hamilton and Warrnambool have all changed to allow women to join as full members.
Most changed their rules in the 1980s, with The Ballaarat Club the most recent to change, in 1998.
Club members contacted by The Advertiser agreed the changes have been for the best, but they sympathised with the Sandhurst Club.
A Ballaarat Club member, who did not wish to be named, said the club changed its rules in 1998 for financial and social reasons.
"My understanding of the debate was that it was 60 per cent financial, 40 per cent social," he said.
"It was a financial consideration in terms of how to carry the club into the next millennium and protect our property, but it was also about the social networks we had built.
"We had a lot of members opposed to it, but we had a lot of people for it and they were basically the committee people."
Despite the change, he said the culture of the club had remained the same - very masculine.
While women were now allowed full membership, voting rights and access to all areas of the club, he said very few had joined.
"When you have a great deal of men, like it or lump it, you are going to have that sort of atmosphere," he said.
He said the club was soon to open up its ground floor to a public restaurant, called Portico, in a bid to educate the Ballarat community about the club.
In Geelong, women play an important role in the club, with a female president and three women on the committee.
"We always had the tradition of wives being part of the club, and in the 1980s we just said `the girls are here anyway, how silly not to have women members'," a club member said.
The Hamilton Club confirmed it had changed to include women 10 years ago for social reasons.
Warrnambool Club manager Glenn Smith said the club had changed in 1984 because of government encouragement, and 20 females now made up 10 per cent of the club's membership.
Club members applauded the Sandhurst Club for bringing up the debate while it was prosperous.
"The Sandhurst Club in Bendigo is very successful. A lot of regional clubs have battled and it is good to see the Sandhurst Club is thinking about it when they don't really need to," a Geelong Club member said.
A Ballaarat Club member said regional clubs had to be more realistic about the way they conducted their business.