Equity and Equality
All around the United States, companies, schools and other organizations are focused on the new buzz word of social change. Equity is perhaps the most misused word of modern times. Organizations have dedicated themselves so much to what they believe is “equity”, they have built committees and hired personnel just to focus on the topic. In the world of education, which is where I live, parents hear a lot about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or DEI in regular communication or curriculum. Without taking the time to understand the topic many families confuse the meaning of equity and equality. In the following paragraphs, I will take a few moments to describe what each word means and provide a few simple examples of each.
Equality
First, we address equality. Equality is a word that has been with us in the United States since our days of revolution and struggle for independence as a nation. Americans value the idea that we are all equal. We should all have equal opportunities to succeed or fail, as we live our once free lives.
Let’s create a fictional set of children for example. Jack and Jill are two fictional characters. They both come from similar families and live in similar cities in the United States. Jill is a driven child who wants to be president someday. She is driven by this goal and works hard through her school life. She takes honors classes, receives excellent grades, and excels in school. She receives an academic scholarship to college and studies political science. She graduates from College with High Honors and works toward her goal of becoming president. While doing so, she gains a great job and makes $100,000 a year.
Jack is a far less driven child. Jack isn’t focused on the future and is completely content to do just enough in life to keep the teachers in school off his back. Jack barely makes it through high school and ends up perfectly happy working as a courtesy clerk in the local grocery store making minimum wage. Without college or an apprentice program, Jack lives his life below the poverty line continuing to place little to no effort to rise above it.
In this story, Jack and Jill both had equal opportunity to make something of themselves. Jill took every chance, worked hard, and achieved her goals. Jack, with little vision, did just enough to survive and continued to live his life that way. Equality says that both fictional characters had equal opportunities and their end results are what they chose to make of those opportunities.
Equity
Let’s take that example, with Jack and Jill, and move them from equality to equity. In a world of equity, Jill would still have worked hard and ended up with a job paying $100,000. The difference is that in an equitable world it would require a 50% tax on Jills income, that would be paid to Jack to equalize their lives. Jack would still put in little effort, but in equity he would benefit from Jill’s hard work.
Summary
If while reading this you still did not quite get the drama of the difference, here is an even simpler example in a community of 100 people. In a society that believes in equality, those 100 people would all work their roles and experience life. In that community, one person commits murder. Equality demands that one person be judged for committing murder and be sent to prison.
Now, change that 100-person community to an equitable one. That same one person commits murder, but instead the entire community is judged because they are all equitable and the entire community is sentenced to prison for the crime.
The major difference is that Equality rewards achievement while Equity punishes achievement. Equality requires that all members of a society are given equal opportunities to succeed, but the outcome is what they make of it as individuals. Equity would demand that all members of a society have the same outcome regardless of effort. Therefore, equity would take from those who have succeeded and give to those who have not even cared to try. Equity is focused on the outcome regardless of effort.
I would like to think that most organizations simply misuse the word equity and mean to use equality, but that this not always the case. I urge you as employees, parents, and persons to know the difference. Equality results in a free Democratic Republic like the United States was founded upon, while Equity is a concept often used by the likes of Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler to enslave their people.
One of these things is not like the other. Know the difference.