Equality Between Men and Women

Lex of the Financial Times writes: "The European Court of Justice has ruled that EU insurers must become gender-blind by the end of 2012. The judgment is philosophically ignorant and practically almost pointless. But it need not have serious ill effects.

To be fair to the ECJ, the philosophical weakness is not theirs, but enshrined in the EU treaty, which requires members “to promote equality between men and women” with no explanation of what this equality means. As far as auto insurers are concerned, the genders are not equal, as there is overwhelming evidence that women are safer drivers than men (especially the young, high testosterone variety). They therefore charge them lower premiums. Unisex rates may abstractly be good for sexual equality, but they are unfair to the safer sex."

I'm curious if (and doubt that) age is another distinction that the EU treaty seeks to equality away. We could avoid this problem entirely if we just had the government provide all forms of insurance...