What makes equality

Creating an inclusive culture for all staff and suppliers. Ensuring equal access to opportunities to enable students to fully participate in the learning process. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Philosophy What do we mean by equality? Ben Davis August 30, What do we mean by equality? How is equality defined? Educating young people about identities, diversity, equality and human rights helps them learn to respect, celebrate difference and help tackle prejudice and discrimination.

It is also important that they are aware of the laws that protect them from discrimination, and know how to speak out on issues of concern or how to get help so that every student has equal opportunity to reach their potential and make the most of their lives. The Act also includes provisions for positive action, which enables schools to provide additional benefits to some students to address disadvantage, where it is established that individuals with protected characteristics suffer disadvantage, have different needs or have low participation.

It would be positive action to encourage girls to take more science subjects where it was established that they were underrepresented. Maintained schools and academies those that are funded and controlled by the local education authority , including free schools, must have due regard to the PSED. This means that they must take active steps to identify and address issues of discrimination where there is evidence of:. Any decisions made on how to take steps to eliminate discrimination, advance equal opportunities and foster good relations must be made on evidence, not on assumptions or stereotypes.

Schools should take proactive steps to identify where bullying is taking place, through information and evidence gathering. They can then put into place good practice solutions which reduce incidents of bullying, where it is demonstrated this bullying is against particular groups.

It will also be used to support the new Ofsted inspection framework for schools which includes consideration of pupils acting safely and feeling safe and free from bullying. These are important contributory factors in the judgement on behaviour and safety. Information-gathering, such as parent and pupil surveys, will form part of the evidence-base for these judgements. The Equality Act deals with the way in which schools treat their pupils and prospective pupils but the relationship between one pupil and another is not within its scope.

Therefore, a school would not be conducting unlawful discrimination if one pupil bullied another pupil because they were gay.

However, if a school did not treat homophobic bullying as seriously as bullying which relates to other protected characteristics, then it may be guilty of unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act. Understanding equality. Home Secondary education resources Useful information Understanding equality.

Unequal distribution of resources is considered fair only when it results from the decisions and intentional actions of those concerned. Only some egalitarians hold inequality to be bad per se.

So called luck-egalitarians regard the moral significance of choice and responsibility as one of the most important values besides equality for an overview over the debate see Lippert-Rasmussen They hold that it is bad — unjust or unfair — for some to be worse off than others through no fault or choice of their own Temkin , 13 and therefore strive to eliminate involuntary disadvantages, for which the sufferer cannot be held responsible Cohen , The principle of responsibility provides a central normative vantage point for deciding on which grounds one might justify which inequality.

The positive formulation of the responsibility principle requires an assumption of personal responsibility and holds that inequalities which are the result of self-chosen options are just. See above all Dworkin, b, p.

Unequal portions of social goods are thus fair when they result from the decisions and intentional actions of those concerned. Individuals must accept responsibility for the costs of their decisions. Persons are themselves responsible for certain inequalities that result from their voluntary decisions, and they deserve no compensation for such inequalities, aside from minimal provisions in cases of dire need see below.

In its negative formulation , the responsibility principle holds that inequalities which are not the result of self-chosen options are to be rejected as unjust; persons disadvantaged in this way deserve compensation. That which one can do nothing about, or for which one is not responsible, cannot constitute a relevant criterion.

Still, the initial assumption remains an ascription of responsibility, and each individual case requires close scrutiny: one is responsible and accountable unless there is an adequate reason for being considered otherwise but cf. Stemplowska for a different interpretation.. If advantages or disadvantages that are due to arbitrary and unearned differences are unfair, this holds for social circumstances as well as natural endowments.

The reasons favoring an exclusion of features like skin-color, size, sex, and place of origin as primarily discriminative apply equally to other natural human qualities, like intelligence, appearance, physical strength, and so forth.

To sum up: natural and social endowment must not count, and personal intentions and voluntary decisions should count. Thus, a given social order is just when it equalizes as much as possible, and in a normatively tenable way, all personal disadvantages for which an individual is not responsible, and accords individuals the capacity to bear the consequences of their decisions and actions, as befits their capacity for autonomy.

In the eyes of such critics, along with the merit-principle this argument also destroys our personal identity, since we can no longer accredit ourselves with our own capacities and accomplishments. However, pluralistic egalitarians should be able to argue that there are special cases, in which people are so badly off that they should be helped, even if they got into the miserable situation through their own fault. In these cases, political institutions have to take certain decisions — for example, in which category a particular case of distress should be placed — and gather relevant information on their citizens.

Against such a procedure, one could object that it subjects the citizens to the tutelage of the state and harms their private sphere Anderson , also Hayek 85— Approaches based on equality of opportunity can be read as revisions of both welfarism and resourcism. Ranged against welfarism and designed to avoid its pitfalls, they incorporate the powerful ideas of choice and responsibility into various, improved forms of egalitarianism. In order to correspond to the morally central vantage of personal responsibility, what should be equalized are not enlightened preferences themselves, but rather real opportunities to achieve or receive a good, to the extent that it is aspired to.

For Cohen, there are two grounds for egalitarian compensation. This egalitarian response to disability overrides equality of opportunity to welfare.

Egalitarians also favor compensation for phenomena such as pain, independent of any loss of capacity — for instance by paying for expensive medicine. But, Cohen claims, any justification for such compensation has to invoke the idea of equality of opportunity to welfare. He thus views both aspects, resources and welfare, as necessary and irreducible.

An incurred adverse consequence is the result of circumstances, not choice, precisely to the extent that it is a consequence that persons of one or another specific type can be expected to incur.

Theories that limit themselves to the equal distribution of basic means, in the hope of doing justice to the different goals of all human beings, are often criticized as fetishistic, because they focus on means as opposed to what individuals gain with these means Sen The value that goods have for someone depends on objective possibilities, the natural environment, and individual capacities.

A problem consistently raised with capability approaches is the ability to weigh capabilities in order to arrive at a metric for equality. The problem is intensified by the fact that various moral perspectives are blended in the concept of capability Cohen , p. In this manner, Nussbaum can endow the capability approach with a precision that furnishes an index of interpersonal comparison, but at the risk of not being neutral enough regarding the plurality of personal conceptions of the good, a neutrality normally required by most liberals most importantly Rawls ; but see Robeyns for a different take on the comparison with Rawls.

For further discussion, see the entry on the capability approach. Since the late s, social relations egalitarianism has appeared in philosophical discourse as an increasingly important competitor to distribuitivist accounts of justice, especially its luck egalitarian versions cf. Lippert-Rassmussen Proponents of social relations egalitarianism include Anderson , Miller , Scanlon , , Scheffler , , , Wolff , and Young Negatively, they are united in a rejection of the view that justice is a matter of eliminating differential luck.

Positively, they claim that society is just if, and only if, individuals within it relate to one another as equals.

Accordingly, the site of justice i. Relational Egalitarianism has a certain overlap with many theories of recognition and non-domination.

What does it mean that and when do individuals within a society relate to one another as equals? Racial discrimination, for example, is a paradigmatic instance of this condition? But once we move beyond a handful of such examples things become much less clear. These claims to social and political equality exclude all unequal, hierarchical forms of social relationships, in which some people dominate, exploit, marginalize, demean, and inflict violence upon others:.

However, forms of differentiation that do not violate moral equality see above are not per se excluded from social equality, if they are compatible with the recognition of the equal social status of concerned parties, as with differences relating to merit, need, and, if appropriate, race, gender, and social background as in cases of affirmative action or fair punishment.

Relational egalitarians need a certain conception of what an equal standing in society amounts to and implies in terms of rights and goods. First, certain political conditions are necessary to allow citizens to participate as equals in democratic deliberation.

These include, among others, the capabilities to vote, hold office, assemble, petition the government, speak freely, and move about freely Rawls , p. The principle of democratic equality as asked for by Anderson requires us to eliminate social hierarchies that prevent a democratically organized society, a society in which we cooperate and decide upon state action as equals. Persons morally owe each other the capabilities and conditions to live as equals in a democratic community Christiano , Kolodny Democracy can be interpreted as realizing public equality in collective decision-making.

Second, to participate as an equal in civil society, certain civil conditions must obtain. These include the conditions that make it robustly likely that injustices such as marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism Anderson with reference to Young , or domination Pettit can be to avoided.

Third, certain social conditions and personal capabilities have to obtain that enable people to enjoy equal standing in society. Citizens need, in this regard, adequate nutrition, shelter, clothing, education, and medical care.

This last point leads into the debate over whether a relational egalitarian conception of social justice yields intrinsic and instrumental reasons of justice to care about distributive inequality in socially produced goods, despite its emphasis on just social relationships and not the distribution of goods per se Schemmel , Elford Justice is primarily related to individual actions.

Individual persons are the primary bearers of responsibility the key principle of ethical individualism. This raises two controversial issues in the contemporary debate. One could regard the norms of distributive equality as applying to groups rather than individuals. It is often groups that rightfully raise the issue of an inequality between themselves and the rest of society, as with women and racial and ethnic groups.

The question arises of whether inequality among such groups should be considered morally objectionable in itself, or whether even in the case of groups, the underlying concern should be how individuals as members of such groups fare in comparative terms.

If there is a worry about inequalities between groups of individuals, why does this not translate into a worry about inequalities between members of the group? A further question concerns whether the norms of distributive equality whatever they are apply to all individuals, regardless of where and when they live.

Or rather, do they only hold for members of communities within states and nations? Most theories of equality deal exclusively with distributive equality among people in a single society. There does not, however, seem to be any rationale for that limitation. Can the group of the entitled be restricted prior to the examination of concrete claims?

Many theories seem to imply this, especially when they connect distributive justice or the goods to be distributed with social cooperation or production. For those who contribute nothing to cooperation, such as the disabled, children, or future generations, would have to be denied a claim to a fair share.

The circle of persons who are to be the recipients of distribution would thus be restricted from the outset. Other theories are less restrictive, insofar as they do not link distribution to actual social collaboration, yet nonetheless do restrict it, insofar as they bind it to the status of citizenship.

In this view, distributive justice is limited to the individuals within a society. Those outside the community have no entitlement to social justice.

Unequal distribution among states and the social situations of people outside the particular society could not, in this view, be a problem of social distributive justice Nagel Yet here too, the universal morality of equal respect and the principle of equal distribution demand that all persons consider one another as prima facie equally entitled to the goods, unless reasons for an unequal distribution can be advanced.

It may be that in the process of justification, reasons will emerge for privileging those who were particularly involved in the production of a good, but there is no prima facie reason to exclude from the outset other persons, such as those from other countries, from the process of distribution and justification Pogge That may seem most intuitively plausible in the case of natural resources e.

Why should such resources belong to the person who discovers them, or on whose property they are located? Nevertheless, in the eyes of many if not most people, global justice, i. Caney Nationalism is an example for such a controversial thesis that may provide a case for a kind of local equality Miller For further discussion, see the entry on global justice. Another issue is the relationship between generations.

Does the present generation have an egalitarian obligation towards future generations regarding equal living conditions? One argument in favor of this conclusion might be that people should not end up unequally well off as a result of morally arbitrary factors. However, the issue of justice between generation is notoriously complex Temkin For further discussion, see the entry on intergenerational justice.

Does equality play a major role in a theory of justice, and if so, what is this role? A conception of justice is egalitarian when it views equality as a fundamental goal of justice. Temkin has put it as follows:. In general, the focus of the modern egalitarian effort to realize equality is on the possibility of a good life, i. It is apparent that there are three sorts of egalitarianism: intrinsic, instrumental and constitutive.

For a twofold distinction cf. Parfit , Temkin , p. Intrinsic egalitarians view equality as a good in itself. As pure egalitarians, they are concerned solely with equality, most of them with equality of social circumstances, according to which it is intrinsically bad if some people are worse off than others through no fault of their own. But it is in fact the case that people do not always consider inequality a moral evil. But something can only have an intrinsic value when it is good for at least one person, when it makes one life better in some way or another.

For such an objection, cf. Nozick , p. Sometimes inequality can only be ended by depriving those who are better off of their resources, rendering them as poorly off as everyone else. This would have to be an acceptable approach according to the intrinsic conception.

But would it be morally good if, in a group consisting of both blind and sighted persons, those with sight were rendered blind because the blind could not be offered sight? That would be morally perverse. Doing away with inequality by bringing everyone down contains — so the objection goes — nothing good. Such leveling-down objections would of course only be valid if there were indeed no better and equally egalitarian alternatives available, but there are nearly always such alternatives: e.

When there are no alternatives, in order to avoid such objections, intrinsic egalitarianism cannot be strict, but needs to be pluralistic. Then intrinsic egalitarians could say there is something good about the change, namely greater equality, although they would concede that much is bad about it. Pluralistic egalitarians do not have equality as their only goal; they also admit other values and principles, above all the principle of welfare, according to which it is better when people are doing better.

In addition, pluralistic egalitarianism should be moderate enough to not always grant equality victory in the case of conflict between equality and welfare.

At present, many egalitarians are ready to concede that equality in the sense of equality of life circumstances has no compelling value in itself, but that, in a framework of liberal concepts of justice, its meaning emerges in pursuit of other ideals, like universal freedom, the full development of human capacities and the human personality, the mitigation of suffering and defeat of domination and stigmatization, the stable coherence of modern and freely constituted societies, and so forth Scanlon , For those who are worse off, unequal circumstances often mean considerable relative disadvantages and many absolute evils; as a rule, these relative disadvantages and absolute evils are the source of our moral condemnation of unequal circumstances.

But this does not mean that inequality as such is an evil. Hence, the argument goes, fundamental moral ideals other than equality stand behind our aspiring for equality.

To reject inequality on such grounds is to favor equality either as a byproduct or as a means, and not as a goal or intrinsic value. In its treatment of equality as a derived virtue, the sort of egalitarianism — if the term is actually suitable — here at play is instrumental. As indicated, there is also a third, more suitable approach to the equality ideal: a constitutive egalitarianism.

According to this approach, to the aspiration to equality is rooted in other moral grounds, namely because certain inequalities are unjust.

Equality has value, but this is an extrinsic value, since it derives from another, higher moral principle of equal dignity and respect.

But it is not instrumental for this reason, i. For the distinction between the origin of a value and the kind of value it is, cf. Korsgaard Equality stands in relation to justice as does a part to a whole.

The requirement of justification is based on moral equality, and in certain contexts, successful justification leads to the above-named principles of equality, i. Thus, according to constitutive egalitarianism, these principles and the resulting equality are required by justice, and by the same token constitute social justice.

It is important to further distinguish two levels of egalitarianism and non-egalitarianism, respectively. In contrast, a non-egalitarianism operating on the same level considers such terms misplaced or redundant. On a second level, when it comes to concretizing and specifying conceptions of justice, a constitutive egalitarian gives equality substantive weight. On this level, more and less egalitarian positions can be found, according to the chosen currency of equality the criteria by which just equality is measured and according to the reasons for unequal distributions exemptions of the presumption of equality that the respective theories regard as well grounded.

Egalitarianism on the second level thus relates to the kind, quality and quantity of things to be equalized. Because of such variables, a clear-cut definition of second level egalitarianism cannot be formulated. In contrast, non-egalitarians on this second level advocate a non-relational entitlement theory of justice. This first-level critique of equality poses the basic question of why justice should in fact be conceived relationally and what is here the same comparatively.

They argue that neither the postulate nor these demands involve comparative principles, let alone any equality principles. Equality is thus merely a byproduct of the general fulfillment of actually non-comparative standards of justice: something obscured through the unnecessary insertion of an expression of equality Raz , p.

From the non-egalitarian perspective, what is really at stake in helping those worse off and improving their lot is humanitarian concern , a desire to alleviate suffering. Such concern is not understood as egalitarian, as it is not focused on the difference between the better off and the worse off as such whatever the applied standard , but on improving the situation of the latter. Their distress constitutes the actual moral foundation. The wealth of those better off only furnishes a means that has to be transferred for the sake of mitigating the distress, as long as other, morally negative consequences do not emerge in the process.

The strength of the impetus for more equality lies in the urgency of the claims of those worse off, not in the extent of the inequality. Parfit distinguishes between egalitarianism and prioritarianism. According to prioritarians, benefiting people is more important the worse off those people are.

This prioritising will often increase equality, but they are two distinct values, since in an important respect equality is a relational value while priority is not. However, egalitarians and prioritarians share an important feature, in that both hold that the best possible distribution of a fixed sum of goods is an equal one. It is thus a matter of debate whether prioritarianism is a sort of egalitarianism or a decent inegalitarianism. In any case, entitlement-based non-egalitarian arguments can practically result in an equality of outcome as far-reaching as egalitarian theories.

Hence the fulfillment of an absolute or non-comparative standard for everyone e. Consequently, the debate here centers on the basis — is it equality or something else? Possibly, the difference lies even deeper, in their respective conceptions of morality in general.

Egalitarians can respond to the anti-egalitarian critique by conceding that it is the nature of some however certainly far from all essential norms of morality and justice to be concerned primarily with the adequate fulfillment of the separate claims of individuals.

However, whether a claim can itself be considered suitable can be ascertained only by asking whether it can be agreed on by all those affected in hypothetical conditions of freedom and equality. See, e. This justificatory procedure is more necessary if it is less evident that what is at stake is actually suffering, distress, or an objective need. In the view of the constitutive egalitarians, all the judgments of distributive justice should be approached relationally, by asking which distributive scheme all concerned parties can universally and reciprocally agree to.

As described at some length in the pertinent section above, many egalitarians argue that a presumption in favor of equality follows from this justification requirement. In the eyes of such egalitarians, this is all one needs for the justification and determination of the constitutive value of equality.

Secondly, even if — for the sake of argument — the question is left open as to whether demands for distribution according to objective needs e. And this is tied in a basic way to the question of what persons owe one another in comparable or worse situations, and how scarce resources money, goods, time, energy must be invested in light of the sum total of our obligations. While the claim on our aid may well appear non-relational, determining the kind and extent of the aid must always be relational, at least in circumstances of scarcity and resources are always scarce.

For insatiable claims, to stipulate any level at which one is or ought to be sufficiently satisfied is arbitrary. If the standards of sufficiency are defined as a bare minimum, why should persons be content with that minimum? Why should the manner in which welfare and resources are distributed above the poverty level not also be a question of justice? Since people find themselves ourselves operating, in practice, in circumstances far beneath such a high sufficiency level, they of course live under conditions of moderate scarcity.

Then the above mentioned argument holds as well — namely, that in order to determine to what extent it is to be fulfilled, each claim has to be judged in relation to the claims of all others and all available resources. In addition, the moral urgency of lifting people above dire poverty cannot be invoked to demonstrate the moral urgency of everyone having enough. In both forms of scarcity — i. Egalitarians may thus conclude that distributive justice is always comparative.

This would suggest that distributive equality, especially equality of life-conditions, should play a fundamental role in any adequate theory of justice in particular, and of morality in general. Defining the Concept 2.

Principles of Equality and Justice 2. Conceptions of Distributive Equality: Equality of What? Relational Equality 5.