Would you pay €4,000 to stay on a women-only island?

Off the coast of Finland, immured in the Baltic Sea, there is a private island where men are banned and only a select few women, with suitably large bank accounts, are allowed to set foot. It is called SuperShe Island and it is the international headquarters of the SuperShe society.

When I first heard about this women-only island, I thought - rather hopefully - that it might be a SuperSapphic version of Love Island. Desert Island Dykes, perhaps? No such luck. There is nothing filthy about SuperShe Island; rather, it is all about the lucre. SuperShe, you see, is basically an upmarket networking group for well-off women. If you have €4,000 (GBP3,500) to spare and you are willing to undergo a rigorous interview, it offers you the chance to spend the week on a “wellness” retreat miles from men, mingling with other affluent, influential women.

Before any men start getting indignant, I should make it clear that SuperShe Island is not the product of a man-hating mind; far from it. As Kristina Roth, the founder of SuperShe, explains on the website: "Women need to spend time with other women. Being on vacation with men can cause women to become sidetracked, whether it's to put on a swipe of lipstick or grab for a cover-up."

It was quite the education reading this; I had no idea straight women were so easily distracted by putting on lipstick for men. It made me worry about heterosexual people.

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SuperShe Island also offers lots of yoga (it is basically illegal not to do yoga at upmarket retreats), organic food and various life-improving exercises, including cognitive exercises to expel negative thoughts. I would love to know exactly how these cognitive exercises work, because the more I read about SuperShe Island (it has had a ton of press lately - there is something about banning men that seems to get people interested), the more my brain was besieged by negative thoughts. What fresh faux-feminist hell is this, I wondered. Please tell me this is not yet another example of a newly minted women-only space painting itself as empowering when it is clearly elitist?

I say “yet another example”, because there has been a boom in bouji spaces exclusive to women. There is the Wing, for example, a fashionable women-only co-working space and social club with locations across the US and a space in London on the way. Membership costs from€2,041 (GBP1,800) a year and there is a waiting list. Then there is the AllBright, an exclusive women-only members’ club in London that opened earlier this year and costs at least €1,105 (GBP975) to join. There is Women Fest, too, the UK’s first all-female festival, which is scheduled to take place in August. (It costs €255 (GBP225) to attend, but some of the profits will go to a tree charity, so I guess that is OK.) I could go and on, but you get the picture: the old boys’ club is being challenged.

I am not against women-only spaces. We still live in a white man’s world. It is important for minorities and women to have places that belong to them, where they feel safe and valued and can be themselves. But I find the trend for high-priced, women-only networking spaces nauseating, particularly as these often use feminism as a marketing device, talking about sisterhood while seeming only to care about bettering a few already wealthy women. This is not what feminism is. It seems to me that these spaces only set back gender equality. So, as far as I am concerned, SuperShe Island can get in the sea.

Guardian News and Media 2018