ECJ ruling on car insurance strikes a crucial blow for true equality

The latest ruling by the European Court of Justice requiring that Britain’s insurance industry phase out discrimination on the basis of gender has provoked the predictable “fog-in-the-channel-Continent-cut-off” calls for withdrawal from Europe.

Rather, we should be asking ourselves when we will become sufficiently mature to accept a judiciary that is empowered to give effect to basic, fundamental rights. It would, for example, be pointless for Britain to have a constitution of its own if there were no way to enforce it: without a remedy, there is no right.

For anyone attuned to equal justice, the ECJ ruling was an obvious one. For those who believe there can be a blanket rule requiring that women get lower driving insurance because generally women have fewer accidents, consider all the other parallel rules that would logically follow: women should have an easier driver’s test, as they don’t need as much instruction; women should have a higher speed limit, as they can safely drive faster. (Indeed, since my mother topped eighty years old, I have tried to stop her from driving her age – or at least asked her to convert to kilometres per hour.)

If we don’t want to accept equality, consider the retirement age: as of today, women can still retire much younger than men. But “generally” nine percent fewer women spend time in the workplace and women “generally” expect to live 4.2 years longer. If we want to take out gender stereotypes seriously, not only should we even things out (as is due to happen by 2019), but go further: all women should be required to work five years longer before their pension kicks in.

The flaw in the insurance regime was the industry’s use of a lazy and discriminatory proxy – because the undifferentiated mass of women have fewer accidents, therefore all women will be treated differently, and all men likewise. But just as there are doubtless some women who are better drivers than their male peers, so there are some who are definitively worse. The essence of gender equality is that we do not base our judgements on sex alone.

We could not continue to have a rigid rule, for example, that all police must be six feet tall. Not only did that operate against women, but it was based on a foolish stereotype that policing is all about being taller and more intimidating than other people. With the evolution of the law, perhaps we have learned that confrontations may be better solved in other ways.

To argue otherwise is ultimately to condemn women, for they continue to suffer from inequality in far more ways than they benefit. For example, why can women not take part in combat, whether on the ground, by air or at sea? Personally I would rather not, but our rule is founded on tradition rather than equity, and we should not prohibit women the opportunity. We were told that the “fragile” female skeleton could not take the g-forces of a modern jet fighter; that turned out to be wrong. Now they say that the presence of women is a distraction for sex-starved men; by finally accepting that homosexuals may be soldiers, we have surely jettisoned that notion as well.

There are other gender discrimination cases coming. And, if we are serious about equality, they will be welcome.