“Male membership needs to be encouraged in order to make women’s organization free from gender bias.” Comment.

Women's organizations — from SEWA to SHG federations — emerged as women-only spaces precisely because mixed institutions marginalized women. The question is whether admitting men would free them of gender bias or reproduce that bias within them.

The case for encouraging male membership

• Gender equality is a societal project: patriarchy is sustained by male attitudes, so transforming men is as necessary as empowering women — the logic behind campaigns like HeForShe and networks like MenEngage and MASVAW.
• Male allies can open doors in male-dominated arenas — panchayats, police stations, markets, religious bodies — where demands raised by women alone are dismissed as merely women's issues.
• Exclusively female spaces risk ghettoizing gender concerns, allowing men to treat equality as women's responsibility; mixed membership normalizes shared domestic and public responsibility.

Risks and caveats

• Male entry can become male capture: the sarpanch-pati phenomenon shows how men appropriate formally female leadership positions.
• Women-only spaces provide safety and voice for survivors of violence and first-generation public participants; mixed forums can silence exactly those they exist to serve.
• Gender bias flows from patriarchal structures, not from the sex ratio of membership — sensitization matters more than mere male presence.

Male membership should therefore be welcomed as partnership: men in supportive, accountable roles, with leadership firmly retained by women, while the deeper work — gender-sensitive education and engaging men and boys — addresses bias at its source. Allies, not overseers, make women's organizations stronger.