After 139 years, Malaysia’s oldest private club is finally letting women inside its historic bar.

The Royal Selangor Club (RSC) voted on Sunday to scrap its rule that had long designated the Long Bar as an exclusive enclave for men, the New Straits Times reported.

“The Long Bar at the Royal Selangor Club was off-limits to women for 139 years... Not any more,” Ms Lorela Chia, founding president of the Malaysia Association of Sustainable Supply Chain and Innovation, said in a Facebook post.

“It’s a mixed bag of emotions when I heard the news,” she wrote. “There is triumph, of course, (even though it’s) 139 years late! But it’s also a reminder that, despite the many achievements of many of us, the quest for equality and equitability continues.”

Following the vote, Ms Dalvin Kaur, a senior executive at Maybank, “made history” as RSC’s first female member to make her way to the Long Bar, said Ms Chia.

The New Straits Times reported that out of some 200 members who were at the extraordinary general membership meeting on Sunday, only eight wanted the no-women rule to stay.

Known for its Tudor-style clubhouse in Kuala Lumpur, the RSC was established in 1884.

It has a rich history and is closely associated with British colonial rule.

It was originally meant to be a meeting place for high-ranking British colonial officials and local elites.

The club is famous for its cricket pitch, and the Long Bar has long offered a perfect view of the cricket matches being held there.

But for more than a century, the bar had a sign that read: “Ladies and children below 18 years are not allowed.”

Women had to watch the cricket matches along the club’s corridor.

There were exceptions to the rule, according to the New Straits Times – on New Year’s Day and the 1998 World Hash Run.

There had never been a set-in-stone explanation for the prohibition.

Ms Chia said it was long thought that the club’s all-male members did not want women to see them when they got drunk while watching the cricket matches and displaying “exuberant behaviour”.

Mr Ramesh Rajaratnam, a club member, said on Facebook that “apologists will quote many historical ‘facts’ (or fables?) to justify such a policy, much to the chagrin of folks, ladies especially”.

He said two women had turned down an offer from the club to become “VIP members” to protest its discriminatory policy.

Mr Rajaratnam recalled a story 50 years ago about a judge, when asked if he was in favour of allowing women at the Long Bar, saying: “Over my dead body.”

He said the same judge, now 94, apparently had a change of heart and was one of those who encouraged his fellow club members on Sunday to vote to scrap the no-women policy “as if I’m dead”.