Is Freemasonry male chauvinistic?
No. That Freemasonry does not initiate women is not de facto proof of misogyny. Why then does it not allow women to join? This is a question that is potentially difficult to answer in our current age. There are several answers, none of which are guaranteed to give satisfaction. At one time the claim was made that there were no female mediaeval stonemasons and therefore there could be no female freemasons. An appeal to tradition is not satisfactory; less so when contemporary research has demonstrated that, albeit few, there were female stonemasons. The initiation ritual in most jurisdictions was designed to reveal a female potential candidate. There have been enough changes in the ritual over the last 300 years that an appeal to tradition in this case is also unsupportable. An argument can be made that nothing is allowed to enter a masonic lodge that may lead to dissention among the members. This justifies the exclusion of any discussion of politics or religion, and has also been used t
