What Is Equality? Should We Be Pursuing Fairness Instead?
- Equality is treating people the same, irrespective of circumstances -
I started this conversation by texting 4 friends, all with the question “What is Equality?”.
Here is how they went. Friend 1 said “Being equal.”
“Ok, well then what is equal? Is equal the same as equality?”
“Ya. Equal regardless of circumstance.”
“But surely if you’re a murderer you wouldn’t be equal (being the same) to everyone else, you’d have certain restrictions in place, like your employer would know that you’ve murdered and you’d be judged and therefore you wouldn’t be equal? Or does circumstance mean to you inherent unchangeable characteristics? Like me being straight and you being gay?”
“Yeah, race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion etc.”
“So people shouldn’t receive prejudice based on these inherent unchangeable characteristics. We’ll just say for ease that those four you named are all the inherent ones and people aren’t prejudice towards them, does that mean that’s equality?”
“But if someone feels they are being prejudice towards someone for whatever reason that’s creating inequality.”
Friend 2 said “Equality to me means equal opportunities for all.”
“Could you have equality of opportunity and there still not be equality?”
Two things came up for me, the definition of equality is not equal opportunity because two people can have the same opportunities in life and both commit the same crime but one gets more jail time than the other, therefore you can have equal opportunity and there still wouldn’t be equality in the world. I also felt they were both talking about a sense of “Fairness”. I was getting closer. Equal is something being the same as something else but what is Equality?
Friend 3 said “To present a blank canvas and allow all individuals to leave their mark. After which one can form an opinion based on the desired relationship and information attained. To get pay based on the role and skill, not gender, race or preference. A fair unbiased opinion (although we are never unbiased) when the same opportunity is presented to another individual. I’ll tell you what comes to mind Gender - Women vs Men, Race - All others vs White, Pay - Race & Women vs Men. Well in brief it’s to be fair to all. But if you really think about it (which I’m sure you have), it’s more complicated than that.”
“I’ve just discovered from talking to others that I’m getting a sense of “FAIRNESS” from everyone.
“Rather than it being about a fair discussion and a sorting out in fairness, it’s become attacks from one side to another and that causes division.”
Well that one went deep, everyone I’ve talked to has very strong feelings about these topics but I have to be rational when answering these definitions. Well, what is Equality not? Being unfair. So equality is being fair? Well yes but is that all, does that cover everything, all the meaning? Something doesn’t feel right about that.
What about advantage and what about circumstances? They exist in life, advantage is having more than in something, for example people who are stronger have more than other people who aren’t as a strong, that’s an advantage. Circumstances are contributing factors in events. If two people commit the same crime but one has a mental disability that in some way contributed to their crime, would it be equality to sentence both equally? Yes it would. BINGO!
Equality is treating people the same irrespective of circumstances. Fairness is treating people with respect to circumstances. There’s a difference, there’s nuance between the two.
If two people attack someone, equality says they both committed the same offence they both get jailed for 2 years, that’s equal. Fairness says one person had the intention to attack someone else, the other person was defending himself against an attacker and as a result he attacked back and hurt the aggressor in self defence. The former gets 2 years, the latter might get no time at all. Fairness is open to multi-variants, Equality is only two things compared to each other.
The final chapter came with Friend 4 the day after, “I was thinking about what you said, that so far what you got from people was that equality was a sense of fairness... but treating two people equally and two people fairly is actually different. If you treat them equally, you treat them exactly the same way, regardless of who they are etc. If you treat them fairly, then maybe you might take into consideration the fact that they might need to be treated differently to be equals. In that case you are not treating them equally but fairly. For instance, when the government put into place quotas to have people of different backgrounds being represented in a work environment... it means when you are hiring you are not treating people equally but treating them on the basis that this is “fair”. So actually I think equality and fairness are very different!”
“I figured that difference out last night and I’m glad you did too. However I argue that for employment, we should hire not based on representation but a system of meritocracy. How competent, how talented someone is at that particular job. Equality says 50% women and 50% men for jobs but fairness asks to take into consideration circumstances and the one I argue is the most important and should take first priority is talent.(Meritocracy is awarding people based on talent.) What if 75% of all the doctors are women and the remaining 15% are men. Equality would say we need to equal the numbers out but fairness (meritocracy) says let the best person for the job get the job. We certainly are biased, that’s why we say we need to get a “feel” for the person being interviewed for the job and the personality of that person is a huge contributing factor to getting employed, it’s the same for friendships, we want to feel like we’re “vibing” with someone, but I argue let’s prioritise meritocracy over representation because in doing so we are hiring people who are the best for the job. That’s a better option because that way we are all getting the best services possible because no one better could have been in those jobs. Equality says equal representation because that’s the same but fairness (meritocracy) says let’s have the most talented get the best positions and if that pushes more towards certain demographics, that’s unfortunate but what we can guarantee is that we’ll have the best services and everyone benefits from the best possible services, the reverse isn’t true and that to me is fair.”
Hope this helps, it sure did for me.
That’s all for now folks,
