Cardiff Morris dance Black Joke at Saint Fagans, 2011.

Cardiff Morris, you will note, has both male and female dancers. In the common parlance it is a 'mixed' side, in Cardiff Morris parlance it is a 'gender non-specific' side.

Not all sides adopt this policy, and that is part of a long history of men-only traditional dancing in Britain.

In April 1915 E. Phillips Barker wrote about some traditional dances he had seen performed with women in the sides. He put it down to 'contamination with the country dance'. Though he did still worry, 'May it no, however, be primitive?'
-The English Folk-Dance Society's Journal
Vol. 1, No. 2 (Apr., 1915), page 38

I'm no historian but perhaps other events around the years 1914-1918 also contributed to a shortfall in male dancers which was made up for by female dancers?

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