Louis Desanges, the president of the 126-year-old Automobile Club de France, found himself in a bit of a bind in 2019. 

Carlos Ghosn had resigned as the chief executive officer of Renault SA following his arrest in Tokyo, and later that year the car company had named Clotilde Delbos as interim CEO. Desanges’s club has traditionally extended honorary memberships to the heads of France’s main auto companies, but this time he couldn’t: L’Auto, as it is known, doesn’t accept women members.