The men only membership policy of Kirkcudbright Burns Club could soon be consigned to history.
Since being founded the club has retained its status of being an all-male domain.
But at its last AGM members agreed to hold a vote on changing the club constitution and extend membership to women.
And now a secret ballot will take place at the club’s annual Burns Supper on January 25.
Club committee member Ian McIntyre, a former Robert Burns World Federation president, said: “The decision to hold a vote has come from the members of Kirkcudbright Burns Club themselves.
“That’s the right place for it to come from.
“Folk will turn up for our supper and get their ballot papers.
“There will be no debate on the evening – it will be a straight ballot.”
A vote in favour at the supper would mean the days of a man making the Reply to the Toast to the Lassies are over.
Traditionally in a mixed supper the speech gives women the chance to get their own back on their male counterparts.
According to Mr McIntyre, the world’s three oldest Burns clubs – Kilmarnock, the Burns Club of London and Greenock – are all mixed clubs.
Historically Kirkcudbright club has been all male – but in its 2018 centenary year then president Gordon Halliday discovered that early on ladies attended suppers regularly but were not members.
Mr McIntyre said: “I think Burns himself would view this as a progressive move.
“There is this view that he was misogynistic. But in the Theatre Royal in Dumfries he wrote the Rights of Woman which was quite ground breaking for its day.
“I think he had a pretty balanced view of women.
“There’s no doubt he was a republican and a progressive and a man of his times.
“But times have changed and forever.”
The Burns Supper at the Arden House Hotel will be the first for three years following the pandemic.
President Alistair Crawford will be the chairman for the evening.
Vice-president, retired Church of Scotland minister Rev Graham Finch, who is an accomplished Burnsian and after dinner speaker, will deliver The Immortal Memory.
Tickets for the 2023 supper will go on sale in early January, priced at £18.
Applications for membership are always welcome and can be made to honorary secretary Dr John Locke via the club website, kirkcudbrightburnsclub.org
Prizes are donated to winners of each discipline and this year the club has announced a new prize category for Primary 7 pupils.
