Airways Aviation have got a similar scheme going with the BWPA, £35k worth of training up for grabs but you can only apply if you're a woman. Not good at all.
It's all identity politics, taking a overall high-level culture and dividing it into various competing groups centered around birth characteristics, all vying for attention. There is a growing backlash against it, which we have seen most recently in the US. It hasn't done much for workers' rights in general really because the left have taken their eyes off T&Cs across employment as a whole in order to promote identity stuff.
In my current trade/profession, also male dominated, a union tried to get a company to do the same thing though the company in question told them to get stuffed. I was rather annoyed when I found my subs were funding the effort.
Back to Easyjet, haven't a clue about the legality of it but I did hear the first round of the programme did not go down particularly well with quite a few of the line pilots. Will be interesting to see if a change of CEO brings a change (or indeed end) to this particular programme. I also noticed that they are advertising at Pilot Careers Live this year too, I wonder if they have anyhing to announce.
Re: Anunaki's point, I think there is sometimes can be an alumni network at play though I don't think the privately educated etc. are necessarily employed by virtue of where they are educated. Rather, they tend to have good grades but also the friendly assertiveness that a lot of companies crave these days. If you're at a boarding school, you have to learn to make friends without much support and this in itself is probably a good prep for the workplace.