Girls shouldn’t get free entry to clubs

On nights out, girls are approached by promoters on the street, and offered free entries and queue jumps. Male friends are asked to go to the back of the line and pay £20 a pop. And I hate it.

Indeed, I once lost my offer of free entry to a (pretty dodgy) club in Barcelona after calmly confronting the doorman about the reasoning behind such sexism. It baffles me that nightclub owners think we’d ever be happy to split the group in half, along gender lines. We’re all on a night out together.

It also objectifies women. The policy is about getting more women inside in order to encourage men to come in – men who will pay a hefty fee for the eye candy to whom they have been granted access.

There are other problems with the policy. It is an unfair assessment of men’s intentions on a night out. It patronises women: it is not just guys who want to meet people on a night out. Women don’t want to congregate on a dancefloor waiting for the men to arrive so we can start our “performance”. And we also don’t relish spending half the night trying to find our male friends, who were separated from us by the promoters. The policy offends women, and – dare I say it – it discriminates against men. Why should they have to pay more?

Equality means men and women should be treated the same, not that women should get preferential treatment. And so I think we should stop giving women free access to clubs. Imagine if it were the other way around – if men got free entry and women were asked to queue for hours or so in the rain, only to be faced with either a massive entrance fee or a refusal of entry.

It belittles our position as independent and self-supporting women, and identifies our gender as economically inferior to men’s. Today, women champion their independence and ability to succeed. The world is shifting; society is levelling out. So, why should we accept something which treats us as a decorative objects and treats the other gender unfairly?