by Phil Parvin
Defining equality
One suggested answer to the question ‘What is equality?’ is that people are equal in that they all possess rights. But this is a circular argument: rights need to be justified, and they are often justified by an appeal to equality. Furthermore, if equality is understood in terms of equal rights, then even the most egalitarian societies in the world violate equality: all societies think it appropriate to deny some members of society (e.g. criminals) the kind of basic rights that others enjoy.
Another suggestion might be that we can ground equality in the idea that we are all rational, reasoning beings. But again, not everyone straightforwardly fits this description: young children, those with learning difficulties, the psychologically ill, and addicts are just some examples of people who may not count as fully rational. Does this mean that they are unequal to those who can reason more clearly? And if so, what normative implications follow? Should people with learning difficulties be denied the right to vote? Do they have different rights and claims on resources? If not, why not?
‘The doctrine of equality! There exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself but is the end of justice […] “Equality for equals, inequality for unequals” – that would be the true voice of justice: and, what follows from it, “Never make equal what is unequal.”’
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols [1889] (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 102.
Treating people as equals
The first way of thinking about equality is via the notion of equal treatment. On this understanding, equality entails treating people as though they are equals. This might entail treating them with equal respect, treating them as having equal status, or appealing to the idea of equal humanity. The idea is that, while we may have unequal talents or resources, still there is something about our common humanity that requires some sort of equality. No one, on this understanding, should be considered as more important than anyone else, as having more status, or more moral worth.
Bernard Williams has suggested that equality understood in terms of common humanity is either false or trivial (Williams 1985). The statement ‘all people are equal’ is clearly false, if it is supposed to mean that all people are the same, or that they have the same levels of skill or intelligence. On the other hand, if the statement ‘all people are equal’ is merely supposed to mean something like ‘all people are people, and thus share a common humanity’, it is not saying very much. We know that all people are people. We want to know what, if anything, follows from that.
Case study: Telic and deontic egalitarianism
In ‘Equality and Priority’ (Parfit 1997), Derek Parfit distinguishes two different kinds of egalitarianism: telic egalitarianism and deontic egalitarianism.
Telic egalitarians, he suggests, are those who believe that equality is a good thing in and of itself. The more a policy, decision, or distributional scheme equalizes the positions of each and every individual in society (in some important sense), the better. The term ‘telic’ comes from the word telos, meaning ‘end point’ or ‘goal’: telic egalitarians thus believe that equality is the end point or goal to which egalitarian justice should be aimed.
Deontic egalitarianism takes its name from the idea of deontology. This is an idea that we will discuss in more detail in Part Two. For now, it is enough to say that deontology is a moral position which holds that actions or decisions should be judged right or wrong according to independently derived principles of justice, rather than, say, the consequences that these actions have or the extent to which they contribute to some overarching telos, or goal, for society as a whole. Deontology is thus closely associated with the idea of justice, as defended by liberal thinkers like Rawls and Dworkin. For Parfit, therefore, a deontic egalitarian is someone who believes that inequality is wrong if and only if it is unjust. That is, some forms of inequality are wrong and others are not, and we distinguish between the two by appealing to principles of justice. In other words, we value equality only because equality is a way of achieving some other desirable value, like justice.
Telic and deontic egalitarianism have very different normative implications, as we can see. Telic egalitarians hold equality to be the supreme value, and thus subordinate other values to it. It is possible that such an approach might lead to unjust consequences: consequences which reduce the general welfare of society or some individuals within it, for example. Deontic egalitarians, on the other hand, might be said to have a more instrumental understanding of equality: equality is important because it brings about the satisfaction of other, wider, more important goals like justice. Therefore, on this view, it may sometimes be appropriate to violate equality if doing so brings about a more just outcome. Liberal egalitarians like John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Richard Arneson and Brian Barry tend to value justice over other values such as equality, social stability or community, as we will see. Hence, they tend to argue for fair (or just) inequality over strict equality. On Parfit’s terms, they are deontic egalitarians, not telic egalitarians.
Nevertheless, Williams argues, it is sometimes important to remind ourselves that all people are people, and therefore to remind ourselves that all people have similar capacities to feel pain, suffering and need. This statement is egalitarian because it reminds us that we need to find reasons to justify treating people differently, given these similarities. If it is bad for us to be poor, then it will be bad for others, too. If it is bad or disrespectful for a white person to be denied access to a restaurant, then it will be bad and disrespectful for a black person, too. The statement that we are all equally human is egalitarian, Williams argues, because it requires that we take account of the needs and capacities of all people, and do not fail to consider particular people or groups of people on grounds that ignore their common humanity.
Equality and difference: Does equality mean treating people the same?
Even if we share a common humanity, there are numerous ways in which we are different. Does equality mean that we should treat people in ways that ignore the differences between them, or that we should act in ways which take account of them?
Consider equality between the sexes. Nancy Fraser argues that there are two possible approaches to sex equality: one based on sameness and the other on difference. Equality which focuses on sameness argues that treating women equally means treating them the same as men. In other words, if we are trying to pursue gender equality, we need to allow women to do the same jobs as men, to enjoy the same rewards as men, and to compete on the same basis as men. If a man and a woman apply for the same job, they should be judged on the same criteria. If a male candidate should be able to show that he responds well under pressure, then the same criterion should apply to a female candidate. The aim of this approach is to eradicate unfair discrimination.
There are two problems with the sameness approach, Fraser and others have argued. The first is that it takes men as the norm, and implies that women can only be equal if they are like men. The second is that it fails to take adequate account of the ways in which men and women are different. It is all very well requiring men and women to meet the same criteria, but some criteria might be inherently biased toward either men or women. For example, treating women the same as men would mean denying them maternity leave, for men do not have babies. Or, if a job had minimum height requirements, then treating women the same as men would mean that women would have to meet the same requirement. As women are, on average, shorter than men, such a policy would mean that many women would not meet the height requirements. The effect would be the same as discriminating against women.
A possible response to this argument is that these differences between men and women – such as childbearing and average height – mean that women simply cannot be equal to men because they are naturally different. It is appropriate to insist that women meet the same criteria as men because those are the criteria which are necessary to the job. If women tend to be shorter than the minimum requirements for b
ecoming a firefighter, for example, then that means that women are not qualified to be firefighters. Male standards should be the universal standards because they are the objectively required standards. The problem, though, is that setting male standards as the universal standards does not treat women equally because it fails to recognize the ways in which their differences might be valuable. It may be true that you need to be a certain height in order to operate firefighting machinery. But why is machinery not designed with women as well as men in mind? And the fact that many professional careers require employees to work for very long hours during the first half of their careers, in their twenties and early thirties, while they become established, will disproportionately disadvantage women as these just happen to be their key childbearing years. Adopting universal male standards fails to question whether those standards are really necessary, or whether the conditions of the job could be altered so as to allow for more equal access to it. Universal male standards also affect women unequally because women face different pressures from men outside of work.
On the other hand, equality based on difference would mean that differences between men and women should be taken into account when designing policies, so that equality might require different treatment. So, biological mothers might be offered more parental leave than biological fathers or non-biological mothers, to take account of the particular demands of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding. Such a policy might be extended to mothers and fathers more generally, this time to take account not of biological parenthood but of the different roles usually ascribed to male and female parents.
This last example demonstrates one problem with the difference approach: it risks entrenching difference and inequality. It may be that the different social roles ascribed to mothers and fathers are themselves the result, and the cause, of inequality. If this is the case, then taking them into account may not be an egalitarian thing to do after all.
‘I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
‘I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
‘I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!’
Martin Luther King, ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, delivered 28 August 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC.
Equality of outcome
Rather than focusing on the idea of equal treatment we might instead focus on the idea of equality of outcome. Equality of outcome is the idea that equality is about distributing some sort of good like wealth, income or welfare, and that what matters is not the amount each person is given but the amount each person ends up with. According to equality of outcome, it makes sense to give a rich person less than a poor person because what matters is the amount that each person has at the end of the process. Similarly, it might make sense to treat women and men differently, if doing so means they end up in comparable positions.
Equality of outcome has come to occupy a central place in contemporary debates about social justice, with different thinkers clashing over what the appropriate equalization should be. We will therefore put off our detailed discussion of equality of outcome until Part 2. For now it is sufficient to mention that the implications of equality of outcome vary, depending on what it is that is being equalized. A commitment to the equalization of wealth will have very different implications to the equalization of welfare, for example: ensuring equality of welfare may well require giving especially needy people more money than less needy people, or giving people with expensive tastes more money than people with simpler tastes. Similarly, ensuring equality of resources will often produce quite significant inequalities in wealth and income as a result of what different people choose to do with the resources they have.
Spotlight: The impact of inequality
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have argued that inequality has a dramatic negative effect on almost every area of our lives (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010). Their research suggests that people living in societies characterized by low levels of inequality between rich and poor live longer, are less likely to experience mental illness, to use illegal drugs, to be obese, to be murdered, or to experience social mobility, and are more likely to trust one another, to do better at school, and to live in a cohesive community. Child wellbeing is higher in equal societies, too, as is general health.
Equality of outcome can be more or less desirable, then, depending on what the relevant good is and how it deals with important differences between luck and choice. We will discuss this tension between luck, choice and equality in Part Two. For now, let us discuss in more general terms reasons why we should value the idea of equality of outcome.
‘No government is legitimate that does not show equal concern for the fate of all those citizens over whom it claims dominion and from whom it claims allegiance. Equal concern is the sovereign virtue of political community – without it government is only tyranny – and when a nation’s wealth is very unequally distributed, as the wealth of even very prosperous nations now is, then its equal concern is suspect.’
Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 1.
Why should we value equality?
Equality of outcome looks intuitively desirable because it seems to identify what really matters to people: having valuable resources. It also seems to be in line with the common-sense idea that it is better to devote resources to those who have the least. And yet several philosophers have suggested that equality is undesirable, unimportant or positively harmful. The most obvious criticism is that it removes any incentive for ambition or hard work. However, there are two further objections worth mentioning.
THE LEVELLING-DOWN OBJECTION
Perhaps the best-known objection to the ideal of equality is the levelling-down objection. Imagine that there are five people and seven five-pound notes. There is no change, and so none of the notes can be split. If we believe that equality is valuable in and of itself, we will think that everyone should get one five-pound note and that the final two notes should be thrown away. Equality would bring everyone down to the lowest level, rather than allowing two people to have ten pounds.
Or, imagine a society in which the principle of equality is taken to apply to all areas of life. Some parents are very devoted to their children, and spend a lot of time with them, reading stories, playing games and so on. Other parents are too busy to do so, or lack the necessary motivation or skills to read to their children or play sports with them. If we think that equality is valuable in and of itself, we will think that it is a good idea to prevent all parents from reading to their children and playing games with them. In that way, we ensure that all children receive equal amounts of parenting, and that no child has more than another.
Intuitively, many people feel it would be a bad thing to throw away the extra money, and to prevent parents from doing the best they can for their children. This intuition is the basis of the levelling-down objection: equality is undesirable because it requires making people worse off than they could otherwise be.
The levelling-down objection is powerful, but egalitarians can escape it. This is because it relies on the idea that in order to be committed to equality we must believe it to be the only value that is important. But few if any egalitarians believe that equality is the only, or the most important, value. After all, if equality were the only thing that mattered, then an egalitarian would see no difference between a society whe
re people were equally well-off, happy and healthy, and one in which they were equally badly-off, miserable and ill. But of course such indifference would be perverse, and so egalitarians must value other things, such as utility, alongside equality.
The problem, though, is that equality and utility can conflict. In the case of the five-pound notes, we cannot increase utility without compromising equality. In the case of the parents, we cannot allow some parents to give their children a better upbringing without at the same time allowing inequality between children. In such cases, we will have to decide whether we value equality or utility more highly. If we value equality as an end in itself, it might seem that we will have to argue in favour of levelling down.
SUFFICIENCY OR PRIORITY ARE MORE IMPORTANT
Derek Parfit and Harry Frankfurt have suggested that many egalitarians who claim to be committed to equality are not committed to equality at all, but to the idea that the conditions of the worst-off should be improved. That is, they argue that the reason why egalitarians tend to reject the levelling-down objection is because it violates the central egalitarian idea that what matters, in the end, is not that everyone has the same amount of money or income, or that everyone is understood to be the same in terms of their talents, intelligence, etc., but that those who have the least in society are provided with enough resources to lead a life that is worthwhile. Parfit, in ‘Equality or Priority?’ (1997), advocates the priority view, the idea that the worst-off should have priority when allocating new resources. Many liberal egalitarians, such as John Rawls, accept some version of this argument. Thus Rawls argues for fair inequality over equality, which amounts to a version of prioritarianism. However, the view that the worst-off should be given priority is not necessarily a view about equality. It would be quite possible to maximize the position of the worst-off but then disregard all inequalities above that position. So many egalitarians agree with prioritarianism but do not wish to stop there.