The Women's Institute should change it's name to the Humans' Institute.
Exactly.
It surprises me that people who are reasonably appalled at the compulsory male guardianship of women rules in Saudi Arabia, are a bit meh about the introduction of compelled male presence within "women's" groups in the UK.
It seems there are women in both countries prepared to facilitate men's rights to affect or control women's groups, and to say what a good thing it is for women to have men's involvement in women's groups, and how it's better for women as a whole to not be allowed to exclude men.
Either women have the right to say, sorry, this group is only for women, no men at all thanks. Or they don't.
I'm sure it makes it easier to swallow that in the UK we can tell ourselves that the compulsory male presence where any group of women gather is 'invited', or 'voluntary' or 'kind'.
Except that the consequences of women deciding, no, we don't want ANY men to have access to WOMEN ONLY groups seem to be significantly disturbing, enough that we're lying to ourselves about how freely we're able to decide to protect our boundaries.
"We freely choose to give up the right to have female only groups, spaces or associations" is more comforting than
"We fear consequences, if we fiercely defend our right to refuse."
If you don't believe you can actually say no, your yes is not freely given at all.