If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Essential support for under 25s
Essential support for under 25s
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
It's not a bad one at all.
When you are assessed for a job you are assessed on an individual basis so why can't we use gender as a criteria for that?
Thats' what happens with insurance quotes. There a tick box that can produce quite different quotes when all the other boxes are the same It's the male/female box.
Hows about job aplications with the female box ticked automatically being filed under the 'offer less pay' heading?
Which is the same as no claims bonuses.
Still means a more productive man will get more than a more productive woman. Isn't that what happens at present? Soemthing you've been arguing to change?
Health insurance should be based on mediacl history, same as car insurance should be based on claim history. That is something I am arguing. Health insurance should not be based gender.
Health insurance coudl aslo be based on smoking and diet, excercise (although difficult to prove)
Everyone would pay more for their insurance if they weren't allowed to discriminate between sexes.
They use statistics to descriminate on gender.
Why can that not be applied in in the assessment of job candidates. Employers like insureres take on a financial risk when hiring people?
What is the difference?
Like I said, I've studied the literature out of a personal mission and it's shocking, on both sides. We are nowhere near equality. But approaching it from a mans perspective, or a womans perspective, or a black persons perspective - in my opinion - is the wrong approach. We need to open our eyes to all discrimination and not see it as anti-man or anti-woman or anti-gay or anti-black or anti-whatever, but see it as anti-equality.
This way we can present a united front as 75% of the battle is really changing people's perceptions. There are gaps in gender priveledges and responsibilities which as you say nobody really recognises, even though in many instances men are disadvantaged (and just like many women before the suffragettes dont realise this).
But it's not about men, or women, that's the point. I've never seen a thread on sex discrimination that hasn't resorted to this, and its infighting that ultimately prevents us moving forward and stamping it out.
I am not going to get into the ins and outs because I don't want people to feel like it is a man vs woman debate because it really -is not-. Both men and women are discriminated against, and its wrong. And we are worse off in some cases than we realise because of our socialisation.
Really ?
(At the risk of second guessing your actions) I suspect you discriminate many times every day.
I would take it personally if someone tried to oppose my discriminating behaviour. I may even cry "discrimination".
You do have a legal remedy by way of disassociation from those insurers.
Discriminate against the discriminators.
Let's ignore the fact that it's blatant discrimination for a second, statistics are not proof of causality anyway. There is a direct causality between owning an expensive car and the cost of any insurance claim being higher. There's a direct causality between being an inexperienced driver and being more likely to make a mistake on the road. There's a direct causality between living in a high crime area and the likelyhood of your car being broken into. There is no proven causality between having a cock and driving like one, no matter how much the statistics might suggest this is the case. There is clear proven causality between being old and being more likely to claim on health insurance, but I don't think age in itself should be allowed to be taken into account there either (which is massively different from individual health problems you may or may not have had, which is no different from having accidents in a car in insurance terms) because it's discriminatory in the same way.
I'd put any amount of money on there being a statistical difference between ethnic groups in terms of insurance claims too. That doesn't mean there's any causality between having a particular colour of skin and either more or less likely to make a claim, it's just a set of statistics. It's one thing to have statistics, it's another to know how to interpret them. And the insurance companies know how to interpret them in the way that means the greatest profits for them, not in the way that is necessarily a true reflection of risk. In fact, there are particular companies out there, such as Norwich Union, who explicitly came out and said they had a policy of quoting extortionately high prices to young men, because they didn't want to insure them. How is that not effectively the deliberate refusal of a service on the grounds of age and gender?
Anyway, there might be good reasons to charge young men more from the point of view of a business. But there are also very good reasons not to have disabled access, not to employ women in their 20s, not to do plenty of other things that either cause inconvenience for a business or reflect an added cost. But there is a much better reason why we make it illegal to do these things, and I've never heard a single convincing argument as to why the insurance industry should be exempt.
You seem to be mistaking judgements about individuals with discrimination against a group. You need power to discriminate against people, and I don't have power over most of the people I see every day.
Au contraire.
I would say that a tangential sojourn by the rational mind is likely to reveal the fragility of homogenising any group of individuals.
You have the power
A study of the history of third party insurance, and more recently seat belt, legislation appears to show (if not convince) that it is all about (big) business.
Prices would have to increase to cover the other business they dont recieve adequate revenue to cover the cost of and deter the extra business the lower price would invite.
You are right, they use dodgy correlations with GCSE maths to rip the consumer off left right and centre. They probably pay acturies 150k to make the tea and play MSN battleships all day.
Insurance is a very competitive market. Paying out 95% of the revenue they revieve from premiums is considered job very well done. Prices have to accurately reflect risk taken on but be low enough not to be undercut by a competitor. There too much room for error.
Why does that bother you? Why is that wrong? Why should they be forced to underwrite risk they dont want?
The thing you're missing is that not all discrimination is objectionable. Discrimination is perfectly fine if you're discriminating on the basis of relevant reasons. The reason why most of us think discrimination is unjust and objectionable is because it involves denying people certain benefits or imposing certain costs of people on the basis of reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the good being distributed.
So denying people jobs or paying them lower salaries because of their race or gender is objectionable because these things have absolutely no bearing on people's ability to do the job. If it did, if it were a relevant reason for discrimination, then it would be perfectly acceptable to pay women less than men, or not to hire them at all, if it were a job that only men could perform. We're allowed to discriminate against stupid people when giving out jobs that require intelligence. We're allowed to pay people more if they have more experience. This is discrimination that is legitimate, because it can be justified with relevant reasons.
So then the question is whether one's gender is in fact a relevant criteria to use when assessing risk and charging for insurance. Now I'm not sure, but it seems like it might be. So it's not unjust or objectionable to charge men more, because their gender is a relevant criteria on which to make the assessment.
How is gender not a relevant factor in someone's ability to do a physical job? As a statistical average, women will not be as productive in a physical job. Not only that, but biologically, we can demonstrate that they will not be productive as a direct result of their gender. But we still demand that employers treat every application individually, because what is generally true isn't a fair way of judging an individual.
What extra business is this? The only thing that can encourage extra business for the insurance industry as a whole, is more cars on the road. Everyone has to have car insurance by law, so the number of customers is defined purely by the number of motorists. There is no way of losing customers in an industry where your product is a legal requirement.
I agree with you. If it's a physically demanding job, it might be.
They're not deny anyone insurance, though. Just trying to strongly discourage young males from taking it up.
I assume there are reasons that they don't want to insure young males, most probably risk-based? If they were a demographic that were largely safe drivers, they'd be snapping their hands off to get them to pay a few hundred quid a year for nowt.
And ShyBoy - this isn't male vs. female scrap. This is generally a fairly reasonable debate on the differences between genders. MOST people in this thread are respectful of the opinions of the other gender, even if they don't necessarily agree.
I would agree with that, and I'd say that that's one of the reasons why we can't compare men and women like-for-like.
If I turned up for a job on a building site, I'd get laughed all the way home. And I could kick up a fuss about equality, and how it's my RIGHT as a woman to be able to work as a labourer should I so choose, but I'm reet petite, and i doubt I could lift a couple of bricks without help. So when I turned up for that interview, it's not discriminatory for me NOT to get the job.
I think that men and women should be equal, where it's practicable, but we are not identical, and should not be treated as such.
So I'm a little bitter that I earn exactly half of what my husband does, even though I'm more qualified than him, because I know that I'm seen as a desertion risk by employers. And I accept that I'll earn less over my lifetime because I'll be the primary caretaker to our kids. I'm a little sore that I have to pay tax on my sanitary products, but I can get over it, because really, it doesn't make the biggest of differences to my life.
What I can't make peace with is the attitudes of people like SG, and the many men I know like him, because they have been slightest in the tiniest of ways by discrimination that swings out of their favour, and now feel it's a 'woman's world'. Please.
So is it right that employers use gender as criteria when quoting rates of pay for job applicants applying for physically demanding jobs?
What about ethnic minorities - what if they were shown to be of greater risk for insurers? People with bad credit history (something that does go on)? etc
You coudl probably find stats to proove all sorts of rubbish why one group is indirectly a greater risk.
That is not strictly true.
It is theoretically,and legally, possible that no motorist has insurance whatever the number may be.
Admittedly, highly unlikely.
Probably not. But if it turned out gender was relevant to my ability to do the job, they can perfectly legitimately discriminate against me by not hiring me.
I'm short and petite and wouldn't expect to be given a job on a building site.
And rightly so, probably. But that doesn't mean that this woman...
...should suffer if she fancied the job, just because she happens to be the same gender as you.
What are you on about? It's theoretically possible my thumb's up your bum right now.
I'm with Stupid claimed
I pointed out that is incorrect. See Road Traffic Act 1988 (and the relevant amendment 1991) for details.
Therefore it is LEGALLY possible that every motorist in the UK could be driving without car insurance and consequently the motor insurance industry is bereft of custom(ers).
(Don't forget to wash your hands :thumb:)
I know what IWS claimed. And although he's incorrect, because not everyone on the road has to have insurance, I still don't see what purpose your comment serves. My thumb could be up your bum - though it's relevance or likelihood is so remote, it's useless to even point it out.
I suppose there are none so blind as those who will not see.
Excellent refutation.
In exploring several areas revolving around the topic (with a co-author with a pro-feminism perspective to provide a balanced argument) - he doesn't really answer the question, but he does raise some really good questions - which as I alluded to earlier are about politics. That's the way I saw it anyway, a piece that is not there to make you agree with it, but rather make you think. We including myself make assumptions that we probably shouldn't make. What it boils down to really is how we prejudice both genders today to a very large extent.
You can pick it up pretty cheaply too.
For a review: http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2007/11/does-feminism-discriminate-against-men.html
The reason why this is relevent for insurance is that yes, discriminatory pricing based on factors we can't control such as gender, age, race are illegal and immoral. The progression of the human race to cherish egalitarian objectives such as income disparity and legal rights, means that we are headed in the right direction. But our work is not done. Equality comes in all forms and I don't believe a lot of important areas have been addressed. It's hard to address issues about anything, however, when they are not politically convenient. As soon as they are - look at fox hunting - then everyone cares a whole lot about it.
Olive, that was my whole point. We need a fresh perspective. People see women's issues, or men's issues. What they need to see are people's issues. Nine times out of ten if you get into that argument, suprise surprise, women will argue on the side of women and men will argue on the side of men. And so you can't really win because there can't be a consensus, because otherwise people would be abandoning 'their' side. I didn't mean about people bitching or a men are better than women argument.