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Equality Bill

Is this the right position? The Sex Discrimination Act always contained an exception whereby women or men on average in a particular sport were not equal in their abilities. That leads to discrimination against me when I try to play golf because women are allowed to have a golf tee about 100 yards nearer the hole than me, even though any woman I know can drive further than I can. That discrimination is allowed under the Bill on the assumption that women, poor things, are not able to drive as far as me. It is completely wrong but that is the assumption. It means that you are then allowed to have all these separate ladies’ days, gentlemen’s days and so forth. Of course, as women advance, they become equally as good as men and one day the difference will disappear, but meanwhile we work on the assumption that men are better, physically, at golf than women and therefore differences of treatment are still permitted. I think that that is the basic assumption.