All-Male Club in Washington to Admit Women

The exclusive, all-male Cosmos Club, breaking with its 110-year history, voted Saturday to accept women as members, its president announced.

Tedson J. Meyers, the club’s president, said at a news conference that the club membership voted almost unanimously--”about 98%, as best as the eye can tell”--to begin accepting the names of women for nomination. He said the names of four women were submitted shortly after the vote.

“This is truly an exciting period for the club,” said Meyers, while standing outside the club’s mansion on Embassy Row on Massachusetts Avenue.

The club, whose members once included Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis D. Brandeis, twice before--in 1973 and 1975--rejected petitions by members to permit women into the club, which was founded by geologist John Wesley Powell in 1878. This time, however, the club’s officers and board of management made the proposal.

‘Surprised and Delighted’

“We, the officers, are amazed, surprised and delighted by the outcome,” said Meyers, a lawyer and former member of the City Council in Washington. “We knew there was a changing mood among the membership, but did not know it would be so overwhelming.”

He said on a standing vote, only 14 of the 800 members attending voted against the admission of women. “We stopped counting when we got to 700,” Meyers said.

Last fall, the Washington Human Rights Office ruled that “there is probable cause to believe” that the club’s men-only policy violates the city’s anti-discrimination law. The office was ready to order public hearings on the case, which could have resulted in the loss of all city licenses and permits, if the all-male policy had continued.

Meyers said that although the legal issues confronting the club “may have been a catalyst, the great majority of members do not believe that the membership policy of this club is a legal issue. Rather the issues are ethical and moral. They related to social changes members individually could accept or ignore as they prefer.”

Has 2,500 Members

Meyers said the club has a limit of 2,500 residential and non-residential members who pay $900 a year and $450 a year, respectively, in dues.

Women candidates will have to qualify in one of the three categories that men do--to be recognized in science, literature or the arts, well-cultivated in any of those areas or distinguished in a learned profession or public service.