Why is Freemasonry only male dominated

In operative building guilds, the heavy physical labor of hewing stone and climbing scaffolding prevented women from joining the building trade, even though other English medieval livery companies admitted female members 1. As the Craft transitioned into speculative Masonry, this custom was preserved as a settled rule, establishing the fraternity specifically as a male society 1.

Masonic historians and jurists attribute the restriction to both this operative inheritance and the foundational regulations of the Craft 1. Writing on the discipline of the Order, Thory argued that admitting women into the mysteries was contrary to the essential principles of Freemasonry 1. Similarly, Gordon P. G. Hills noted that women remain ineligible simply because the Craft was established as, and remains, a men's society 1.

To accommodate female participation without altering Craft regulations, alternative rites and bodies were created. Eighteenth-century France saw the development of Adoptive Masonry, which allowed female lodges under the supervision of male Masons, though critics considered it a relaxation of traditional discipline 1. Later, in 1893, Georges Martin and Maria Desraimes founded La Maçonnerie Mixte in Paris, initiating women into the Scottish Rite and giving rise to Universal Co-Freemasonry 2. Established Masonic authorities, however, do not recognize these mixed jurisdictions or consider them part of regular Freemasonry 21.