Women and Freemasonry

Freemasonry and women have a complex relationship, which can be readily divided into many phases with no demonstrable relationship to each other until the 20th century. A few women were involved in Freemasonry before the 18th century; however the first printed constitutions of the Premier Grand Lodge of England appeared to bar them from the Craft forever.

The French Lodges of Adoption which spread through Continental Europe during the second half of the 18th century admitted Masons and their female relatives to a system of degrees parallel, but unrelated to the original rite. After eclipse in the 19th century, they were revived as women-only lodges in the 20th, and these later adopted the male degrees to give rise to French women's Masonry in the 1950s.

18th-century British lodges and their American offshoots remained male only. In the late 1800s, rites similar to adoption emerged in the United States, allowing masons and their female relatives to participate in ritual together. These bodies, however, were more careful to discriminate between the mixed ritual and the genuine Freemasonry of the men.

In the 1890s, mixed lodges following a standard Masonic ritual started to appear in France, and quickly spread to other countries. Women-only jurisdictions appeared soon afterwards. As a general rule, the admission of women is now recognised in Continental (Grand Orient) jurisdictions. In Anglo-American Freemasonry, neither mixed nor all-female lodges are officially recognised, although unofficial relations can be cordial, with premises sometimes shared.

Women in Mediaeval and Renaissance Europe were legally assumed to be subject to their fathers, then to their husbands after marriage. The status of women within Mediaeval trades was largely dependent on the local interpretation of femme sole, the legal term for a single woman. This was usually the widow of a tradesman, who was permitted to continue her husband's business after his death, and often established in the rights and privileges of his trade guild or company. More rarely, single women would achieve success in their father's trade. Exceptions occurred mainly in trades linked to traditional women's occupations, such as haberdashery and needlecraft.

In Norwich, a woman called Gunnilda is listed as a mason in the Calendar for Close Rolls for 1256. It is reputed that Sabina von Steinbach, the daughter of the Architect, worked on Strasbourg Cathedral in the early part of the 14th century, although the first reference to her work comes 300 years later. In England, hints of female participation appear in the Regius Manuscript (ca 1390-1425), and in the Guild records at York Minster in 1408. Women were employed in administrative roles in the London Mason's Company, and as such received the benefits of membership. Also, the charge in York Manuscript No 4, dated 1693 and used as a warrant by the later Grand Lodge of All England at York, contains the phrase "hee or shee that is to be made mason". While a number of masonic historians have categorised this as a "misprint", Adolphus Frederick Alexander Woodford, who studied and catalogued these documents, considered it genuine.

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