Women-only clubs are opening up all over London (Picture: Corbis)

I’m walking through an expensive, single-sex private members club in London’s ultra-swanky Belgravia. You’re thinking velvet chairs reeking of cigar smoke, exorbitantly priced single-malts and billiards (naked or otherwise) right? But you couldn’t be more wrong.

I’m actually in a sparkling atrium studded with bowls of roses and echoing with piped-in birdsong. The air smells fresh and full of money, as if someone nearby has lit a Diptyque candle the size of a pirate’s keg. Welcome to Grace Belgravia, the £5,500-a-year women’s members club, which opened last month.

Grace has joined a clutch of new London clubs, societies and networking events that exclude men. Other venues include The Sorority club in Holborn; STK, a female-friendly American steak chain; and Dea Latis, a beer-tasting club. Desperate Housewives actress Eva Longoria opened a steakhouse specifically for women called SHe in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve and has plans for a London branch.

Women-only club Grace Belgravia (Picture: Tom Sullam)

Offering medical care from the queen’s doctor, Tim Evans, and personal training from Samantha Cameron’s own Mr Motivator Matt Roberts, Grace aims to provide a holistic health and lifestyle base for members. I’m told a lot of famous women go there because they appreciate the privacy and I’m asked to sign a disclaimer form, but the place is fairly empty when I tour it on a weekday evening. Men are allowed in on a Thursday night, for dinner only.


Kate Percival (Picture: Linda Nylind)

The club’s founder, 53-year-old Kate Percival, is keen to pit the venue in conscious opposition to the hedonistic, over-privileged gentlemen’s clubs of yore. ‘Grace is not for spoilt women. It isn’t just for ladies who lunch,’ she says. ‘For me it’s for professional women who recognise that they’re fallible and need support. We talk about empowering women, giving them the tools to go out and be the best that they can be.’



Indeed, while business talk has traditionally not been allowed inside gentlemen’s clubs, the rise in female-only socialising has a real professional bent in an age when too many business deals still get made man-to-man on the golf course.

Lisa Tse, founder of The Sorority

Lisa Tse, 33, is the founder of The Sorority, ‘an exclusive club for inspiring professional women’. The idea for the club, an international network rather than a physical venue, came when she started her first business at 26 and didn’t know anybody in London. ‘If I’d had access to women who were prepared to provide advice, it would have gone a long way,’ says Tse. ‘It’s through sharing experiences that we can succeed together.’

The need for same-sex friend-ships, particularly among women who have had to move somewhere new for work, is also a major factor. With hectic schedules leaving little time for making friends, there may be plenty of ways to find a date nowadays but it can be much harder to meet girl mates.

Canadian KC Gates, a 41-year-old professional rugby player, turned Soho’s Sofakingcool into a women-only restaurant renamed KC’z Bar this month. While the venue has generally attracted a gay clientele, she’s keen to make the new eatery a welcoming hub for all women.

KC Gates (Picture: Alex Lentati)

‘Many women want to be around other women they can socialise and network with while having fun,’ explains Gates. ‘A lot of them will be lesbians, if you want to focus on that, but certainly not all of them. I envisage all different types of women coming in, from athletes to creative individuals.’

Gates also emphasises that, although men will be allowed in on designated nights, she wants to create a ‘safe zone’ for women to go where they won’t be seen by or bothered by men.

‘There’s the stereotype where women say can’t eat or be themselves in front of a man, whereas they can let loose with their girls, and that is exactly what they are doing at these venues,’ she says. ‘I know women who want a place to eat that’s just for them, with female-only staff. Women who wear veils can come in and undress, and they don’t have to hide.’



But surely the fact there are some women who aren’t comfortable eating or being themselves in front of men is problematic for society and something to be remedied rather than indulged? Female-only venues have also been dismissed by some as ‘lazy feminism’: fighting exclusivity with exclusivity rather than working towards equality.

This is valid criticism, although it seems unlikely that a few spas and eateries barring their doors to men will do much to upset thousands of years of entrenched patriarchal domination.

From teen sleepovers to girls’ nights out, the typical female’s life is already studded with plenty of opportunities for single-sex socialising but, within certain sectors of society, this trend for female-exclusive clubs and networks seems set to grow.

‘There’s been a paradigm shift,’ says Percival, ‘and I think women are definitely more collegiate than they have been in the past. The appeal of sorority is stronger than it’s ever been.’

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