Is it sexist for the insurance industry to take gender into account when setting its premiums?

Its all about risk assesments that the insurance bains carry out. Its a business fact that they are less likely to have to pay out to women. Not sexist.

The adverts however - particularly that Sheila's wheels bollocks - all pink and fluffy are poticularly vomitous and are definitely sexist.

But what advert isn't??????

Don't get me started......

I thought it was based on people who drive their cars less, who have fewer collisions because they drive less and have less experience in driving. This equates to women (who statistically drive less because they work less and most cars are driven for work purposes).

I wonder if nowadays car insurance couldn't be done on a totally individual basis, based on a persons track record. Each newly insured person would start on a high premium (as indeed they already do) and then go up or down based on accidents and speeding convictions. (as already to a large extent happens). I understand why statistically averaged risks are used for other forms of insurance but less so for car insurance TBH.

I thought the women thing was on risk status? If that is true then it's no more a result of planned bias than age, address, type of car, career........

Right, so by your reckoning, I should paying the same premium as a 19 year old boy - if you wish to eradicate all "discrimination"?

So when something favours women its good business sense but when it favours men its patriarchy?

The problem with equality (its not really a problem I'm just proving a point) is that once you start where do you stop.

The problem with statistics - along the lines to lies, damn lies and statistics is you can make then say anything you want to.

I work with them all day and there are very general ones. i.e. "you are more likley to crash a car than a sheep is". Partly becuase sheep don't drive cars.

There is also the ever popular men crash more cars than women. Which again is probably true.

However what about a 35 year old male currently a dsa examiner vs 35 year old single mum.

Now the specifics are not important but there will be some subsets out there where men are safer than the equivalent womens sub set or women in general. so in this point is it good to say you belong to the sub set of safe driving group (i.e. 35, driving examiner etc) but also to part of a main group (male). Which do you believe?

In any case the whole insurance system is a joke. I used to know someone who left ex girlfriends on his cars policy (wierd, but money saving). At one point he had 7 on there. Because it reduced his policy down from £1000 to £300. Nothing in the policy said they had to drive the car, just that they were insured if they wanted to.

I personally believe in ultimate equality, no discrimination at all based on gender, race, sex etc in anything. Which brings me back to the equality line and where do you stop once started.

Insurance companies also base their premiums on age - will that be assessed also?

Insurance companies base their premiums on assessment of risk and likelihood of paying out.

It's not "sexist" any more than it's "ageist". It's based on risk which is calculated using real data.

Judging by the fact that two hours after this question has been posted and no feminist has yet tried to claim it isn't sexist shows that it is clearly sexist.

While I have no doubt that this does probably make business sense, so does charging a working woman a higher tax rate than a working male who earns the same amount of money to alleviate the public money burden of longer female parental leave. The reason this isn't done is because a business decision in matters like this doesn't take precedence over sexism