In reply to Al Evans:
> ... PC and CC are kindred clubs as far as huts are concerned.
> One of the big resistances of the older male members was that the CC would need to make 'women only' dormiteries in the huts (as the FRCC had), thankfully this has never happened.
Are you sure about this? I don't think the FRCC has separate dorms for men and women because of their reciprocal rights with the PC. As far as I know, we (FRCC) always had separate dorms anyway. Also, the dorm in the Pinnacle Club hut is a mixed dorm so I'd be suprised if the Pinnacle Club members would have insited on a women only dorm in the CC huts as part of the terms of their reciprocal rights.
It is also worth noting that male and female members of clubs who have reciprocal rights with the Pinnacle Club have identical access to the Pinnnacle Club hut. I understand that for some time the FRCC had reciprocal rights with the Wayfarers in spite of the fact that the Wayfarers did not allow women to sleep in their hut. To some, this seemed unfair as it meant that the FRCC were extending reciprocal rights to all the Wayfarers members while the Wayfarers were only extending reciprocal rights to some of the FRCC members. Anyway, that is all sorted now as the Wayfarers do allow women to sleep in their hut (AFAIK).
I'm a member of the Pinnacle Club and also two other mixed sex clubs and, to be honest, I am still a little undecided about some of the obvious issues surrounding single sex climbing clubs. I didn't join the Pinnacle Club because it was a women only club. To me that was incidental. One of the earliest PC meets I went on was what really convinced me to put aside my ideological qualms about single sex clubs and just get on with the climbing. I had been trying to join in with a meet that was planned for a forthcoming weekend by a different club that I was a member of at the time. It was proving hard to get any information or find anyone else who was planning to attend and in the end the proposed meet never really happened due to general apathy. Anyway, frustrated by this, I gave up trying to go to that meet and went on the Pinnies meet instead. I was amazed to see such a strong, keen, friendly group of active climbers who were just busy getting on with climbing. There were teams climbing all kinds of grades and I was just so impressed. It became blindingly obvious that if I wanted to maximise my opportunities to climb, joining the pinnacle club was the best option at the time. So, I did and on reflection I think it was a really good idea.
There are of course many issues around single sex clubs and views differ on whether they are useful in moving us towards the goal of reducing gender discrimination. Debating such issues is obviously a legitimate pursuit but I suspect you might find that many members of the Pinnacle Club will number amongst the large group of people who are too busy doing other stuff (e.g., climbing) be able to spare the time to join in.