Equality Issues

Hi

I am a member of our club Ladies Section and we have had conflicting advice from England Golf and our regional association.

The issue is that one of our lady members is questioning the different rules for ladies and gents. (She is not advocating wanting to play in Men's comps)

She argues that whereas men in our club can play a competition at any time of the day of the comp and have their card marked by any other member, male or female, the Ladies Section have set tee times and must have their card marked by another lady member. As she is a working lady in a high powered job she advises this discriminates her from participating in Ladies comps, traditionally Saturday morning, 10.00 till 10.35, Wednesday morning (same tee times). She works two Saturdays each month.
Medal comps we can accommodate her as working ladies are allowed to play on an evening of the day of the competition, but up to date she has had her card marked by another working lady.

England Golf compliance officer advices she could have a case for discrimination and the club may need to bring into line the entry requirements to both genders - the Regional Officer advises that she has a "lifestyle choice" i.e. golf or work. (I would argue a lot of ladies don't have a choice these days - work is a necessity).

Has any other club had this problem and managed to solve it?

The committee want to accommodate her as far as we can, but we do no wish to lose the Section which encourage other ladies to join and be involved straight away. The section tries to mix new members and experienced members together to include them from the start.

There are arguments for, and against, but we need to know that whatever decision we make does not contravene the equality legislation. - Has anyone else been in this position and had a satisfactory resolution?

No specific answer but some in-depth discussion previously on these 2 forum posts:

http://www.golfshake.com/forums/view/7110/addressing_the_equality_act.html

http://www.golfshake.com/forums/view/8894/Equality_Bill_and_Women_Golfers.html

I would also recommend checking out the Golf Club Management website which have had a few good articles in the past particularly from lawyers:

http://www.golfclubmanagement.net/tag/equality-act/