As the title says, I run a university club. Our campus is large (several thousand students) but the club is relatively niche. We have about 100 members, but only 10-20 regularly attend club events. Most of our members, and nearly all of the regulars, are male.

Several times this year, people have raised the question of how we can get more women to be involved. I usually state my opinion - that the theme of our club appeals to men more than women, and that many people join clubs because they want to boost their social life, which women often do in other ways - and then let the rest of the members debate what we should do. So far, nobody has come up with any suggestions.

But lately (possibly because my tenure as club head is coming to an end and I'm not planning on running for reelection) I've wanted to go a bit further. I have wanted to ask why some of our club members think we need to go out of our way to try to attract more women. It just seems that they have this idea that women need to be helped with everything, including joining and participating in clubs. That, to me, seems a bit infantalizing. I also don't understand why they seem to think we need to bend over backwards to try to get more women into the club, when we could just put our effort and funding towards club events that appeal to general audiences, or to our current members.

I guess I'm writing this to see if anyone has any insights or advice. I don't fully understand my own point of view yet, and I am far from understanding theirs. I don't want to get cancelled for carelessly giving my opinion without thinking it through first, nor to I want to reveal too much of my opinion while asking them questions about theirs.

For context, one of the four people who has brought up the lack of women in our club is a woman herself, and the rest are men. Our club board is very left-wing, and the members are a bit more politically diverse but also mostly left-leaning.