By Dave Chapple, Bridgwater

UNLIKE VC Gardner (Postbag, Dec 18), I fully support Sedgemoor Council’s “Women First” scheme.

RELATED: Letter: Men ignored because of women's whinging and whining

This is because, in just about every part of our society, women do not have the same opportunities as men, and are actually second-class citizens, discriminated against in every walk of life.

This is fact, not opinion. So women are paid much less than men, 49 years after the “Equal Pay Act” of 1970. Women in the UK are overwhelmingly under-represented in higher managerial and director-level posts.

The most extreme UK sex inequality is in the murder rate: last year 139 women and girls over 14 were killed by men. The number of men killed by women is so small I cannot find the official figure!

This country is still owned, run and governed by white upper-middle class men who by and large were born into money, went to public school and Oxbridge, and never looked back to consider equal opportunities for women.

Finally, the old lie about race, which Ms Gardner perpetrates.

There is no ‘Race Relations Industry’. There are laws against race discrimination, laws which began in 1965 when it first became illegal to deliberately employ only white or English people, or rent a dwelling with a sign in the window: “No blacks, no Irish, no dogs.” So we have become a little more civilised since 1965, haven’t we? But perhaps Ms Gardner would like to see that Race Relations Act repealed?:If so, she joins some vile bedfellows.

It always amazes me to read of people tilting at decrepit windmills when they should be angry about all injustice, and fighting to make our country better and more equal not less.