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 INTRODUCTION

Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.
- Frances Wright

Among the billions of natural beings in this world, innumerable inequalities abound.
People are different and unequal in many aspects. They belong to different races,
religions, sexes, nations and so on. Their physical, genetical and mental abilities also
differ. People differ with how they approach life and are taught to live their lives. The
range of inequalities and disparities that humans display is very wide this is an accepted
fact.
Yet, as humans we believe, and rightly so, according to ones own perspective that we
are essentially equal and possess equal worth especially when it comes to realizing this
ideal in social, gender, economic and political structures of our society. We usually
invoke the concept of equality when we wanted to be counted as an equal, to be treated-
and aspiring or claiming to be treated-as an equal, to be equally entitled to social goods.
Our capacity to to feel pain or to suffer, capacity ro experience affection for others or to
be able to bear relevant consequences of the same are capacities that have a moral
resonance. These are moral capacities that are universal to humanity1.

The following chapter is concerned with the ideal of Equality; its meaning, nature, types
and classifications. In its general usage, Equality is a very vague and wide term. The
word equality originates from the latin word, aequalitas which basically means equal.
Through the following few pages, we would like to give you a better understanding of the
above-mentioned topics.

1 Bernard Russel (1872-1970) was a renowned British philosopher and

mathematician who was an adamant internationalist and worked extensively on
the education of young children

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MEANING OF EQUALITY

Justice is held to be equality, and it is, but for equals and not for all; and inequality is
held to be just and is indeed, but for unequal and not for all2. This is the first formal
statement of equality present to us. At its outset, it is essential to note that the modern
idea of equiality is derived from the theory of rights. Equality is hence a prescriptive
term, not a descriptive one. This is usually based on our argument that men must be
equal, that that they are in fact equal, something which leads to our classification of
Equality as an ideal.

Equality in its present sense that is as a principle of correcting the unjust inequalities in
society, is a typical modern idea. There is no doubt that large inequalities of power,
wealth and prestige have been a part of our social structure from early times. But as Tom
Bottomore, in his Classes in Modern Society has stated :

During the greater part of human history this inequality among men has been generally
accepted as an unalterable fact. Ancient and medieval writers, when they touch upon the
subject of the social hierarchy, always tended to provide a rationalization and justification
of the established order. Very oftem in terms of a religious doctrine concerning the origin
of social ranks Only in modern times and particularly since American and French
Revolutions, has social class, as a stark embodiment of the principle of inequality,
become an object of scientific study, and at the same time of widespread condemnation in
term of new social doctrines.

This states that, Traditional thinkers took the ideal of equality as something divinely
ordained. They sough to demonstrate that man could lead an ideal life according to his
predetermined status. Such mode of thought was quite natural to slave-owning society,
feudal socity and caste-based society which were bereft of scientific thinking. They took,
social order, rather wrongly, like natural order, as something incapable of change by
human design or effort.

2 Book III, Chapter 9 of Politics, Aristotle draws a very straightforward correlation

between justice and equality when he says this.

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 All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to
develop our talents. John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Equality of opportunity is basically a political ideal that is opposed to caste hierarchy but
not to hierarchy per se. The background assumption is that a society contains a hierarchy
of more and less desirable, superior and inferior positions. Or there may be several such
hierarchies. In a caste society, the assignment of individuals to places in the social
hierarchy is fixed by birth. The child acquires the social status of his or her parents at
least if their union is socially sanctioned.. In contrast, when equality of opportunity
prevails, the assignment of individuals to places in the social hierarchy is determined by
some form of competitive process, and all members of society are eligible to compete on
equal terms. Different conceptions of equality of opportunity construe this idea of
competing on equal terms variously.

The ideal of a society in which people do not suffer disadvantage from discrimination on
grounds of supposed race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation is widely upheld as
desirable in itself. For many, the ideal is more compelling than any argument that might
be offered to support it.

The principle of equality of opportunity may be applied in two distinct situations: a)

Competitive situation b) Non Competitive situation. In a competitive situation, equality
of opportunity implies access to a scarce good or a prize i.e coming first in a race or an
examination. In a non-competitive situation, it implies equal acess to essential goods and
services plus a good of ones choice, depending upon ones ability and effort.

In short, Equality of opportunity calls for creating conditions where everyone has the
same starting point, or equal life chances. It aims to reduce the impact of inequalities
attached to social, religious and economic backgrounds of various persons instead
concedes to giving them differential rewards according to their differential skills and
efforts.

Let us look into what some of the great thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth
perceived Equality to be.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau advocates equality in society. He advocated an equal

distribution of rights but not an equal distribution of rank. For instance he does not, reject
differences in property and rank, as has been seen when he says Distributive justice
would be opposed to the rigorous equality of the state of nature, even if it were

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practicable in civil society. 3 Throughout, Rousseaus political writings he has remarked
on a single theory of distributive equality. He implies that Political inequalities are wrong
because they do not respond to natural inequalities 4 and states that with the development
of private proeprt and more complex human society, private property is invented, and the
labour necessary for human survival is divided among different indivisuals for the whole.
This division of labour and the beginning og private poerperty llow the property owners
and all those who live off the labour of others to dominate and exploit the poor.

Rousseaus argument in the Second Discourse is that only natural inequality among men
is that which results from differences in physical strength, for this is the only sort of
inequality that exists in the state of nature. As he explains, however, in modern societies
the creation of laws and property has corrupted natural men and created new forms of
inequality that are not in accordance with the natural law. He calls them unjust able,
unacceptable forms of inequality. It is in, in other words, moral inequality, and he
concludes by making clear that this sort of inequality must be contested. From this
analysis and the prognosis of new revolutions, a straight road leads to the works of Karl
Marx.

At a level, Marxs views on equality can be best described as a critique of liberal equality.
In his rant against te prevalent socialist conception of equality, Marx derided his
contemporaries for their inability to account for their materialistic conception of history.

3 Discourse on the Origin of Equality. (p.222)

4 Discourse on the Origin of Equality. (p.132, 133)

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SOCIAL EQUALITY

Social equality means that there is no distinction in the matter of social science of
different people because of differences in caste, color, creed, religion or rank. All are
equally useful members of it and possess legal and economic. social equality refers to
social, rather than economic, or income equality. "Equal opportunities" is interpreted as
being judged by ability, which is compatible with a free-market economy
Social equality refers to social, rather than economic, or income equality. "Equal
opportunities" is interpreted as being judged by ability, which is compatible with a free-
market economy. Social equality refers to the structural issue of the distribution of
material rewards. It depends upon the level of economic development J.J Rousseau, in his
Discourse on the Origin of Equality, drew an important distinction between the two types
of in equalities found in social life; natural equality and conventional inequality. Natural
or physical inequality, as a statement of fact, consists in the differences of age, health,
bodily strength and inequalities of wealth, prestige and power. Should we claim that
basic political rights should be equally distributed, or should we concentrate on income,
workload, wealth, health care, or opportunity? The units to which these goods are to be
equally distributed is also problematic. Many believe that all proposals should be in terms
of individuals. All people should have an equal attainment of good X (or the good we
decide should be equally distributed). Suppose we use income as the good. Should we
really insist on all individuals having a right to the same income when many people are
infants and many people share expenses in the same households? We may believe that a
proper mark of social equality will call for equal distribution of income to all households.
This example shows that the question about the unit to be equally provided with a good is
not properly answered by the quick claim that individuals constitute the unit.

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 Legal equality
Legal equality is also known as equality under the law, equality in the eyes of the law or
equality before the law. Under this principle all the people are subjected to the same laws
of justice. Equality before law means that law guarantees equality and freedom to each
and every citizen of a country. This concept if further explained as equality before law
and equal protection of law.

Equality before law: It consists in equal subjection of all classes to the ordinary law of
land administered by the ordinary law courts.5 It basically means that the law does not
discriminate anyone. In other words, the law does not make any distinction between rich
or poor, labor or capitalist, Brahmin or Dalit. In the eyes of law, everyone is equal.

5 A.V. Dicey Law of Constitution 9th ed. By E.C.S. Wade 1941 p 202

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Equality before law implies equality of rights and duties in law i.e. equal protection of
life and limb of everyone under the law and equal penalties on everyone violating them.6

Equal protection of law: Equality before law does not mean absolute equality. Whilst the
law does not make any discrimination among the people, equal protection of law means
that on the grounds of certain circumstances, reasonable discriminations can be made.
The law, in certain special circumstances makes sensible discriminations. This can be
understood very well in the context of Indian constitution were by, the law does not
recognize any discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, creed, religion and place of
birth however, the Indian constitution does accept certain rational discrimination like
reservations for schedule caste and schedule tribe; reservation in seats and in queues for
women. Such discriminations which are based upon the backwardness, ability, sex,
economic status, social status and etc are considered as reasonable discrimination. In such
situations the law protects the unequal people by equal application of laws.

However, the legal equality becomes meaningless in the absence of equality of

opportunity to get justice. In modern society, people need both time and money to protect
their right of equality. All the people in the society may poses the same right to equality
but all of them do not have the required resources or the power to justify these rights.
Even though inequality still prevails in our society, it is gradually diminishing.7

6 Benn and Peters p. 123-124

7 Barker, op. cit., p. 151

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 Gender equality
Gender equality is one of the most important concepts in political philosophy. Gender
quality refers to an equal representation of women and men in the society. There is still a
lot of gender discrimination prevailing in the modern society. Women are still made to
live in the shadows of men, even though they have achieved all the things a man has.
From the outer space to micro research in the fields of science and commerce, women
have excelled in every way possible. Despite this; there still exists gender inequality in
our society. The society is still biased towards its male members, take for an instance,
women are paid less as compared to men for the same kind of work they do. Women have
always been suppressed by its male counterpart. The Women have stated to come up in
the society and they are doing the same tasks their male counterparts have been doing.
The majority of the worlds poor are women: around 70% of the people who live in
extreme poverty, on less than US$1 a day, are girls and women.8 Hence, the main aim of
gender equality is basically to place men and women on an equal level in the society.
Gender equality gives an equal opportunity to both men and women, to represent
themselves adequately in the society. The ultimate aim of this principle of equality is to
create a society which is free of gender biases. The ideal of gender equality is to create a
society where in the women and the men would compete against each other on the same
stage, not influenced by gender biasness but entirely on the basis of individual merits and
their personal capabilities.
The law does not discriminate individuals on the basis of their gender, it guarantees
justice to each and every one regardless of their gender, hence, the society too should not
be biased and treat everyone as if they were one.

8 'What is equality?' (www.ippf.org 2013) <http://www.ippf.org/our-work/what-we-

do/gender/what-gender-equality> accessed 26-08-2014

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PAGE 9
 Equality of opportunity
Equality of opportunity means gives everyone the same opportunity in the society
irrespective of their religion, caste, race, sex, creed and place of birth. The society is
filled with people of different racial, cultural and linguistic background. And it is the duty
of the Govt to the on to their consideration they there minority groups help build the
governments respect in the other countries. The conventional conception on the other
hand, holds that in addition to the minimal concern with relevant competencies, skills and
qualifications. In a society that is characterized by different levels of wealth, this
requirement may entail restricting parents ability to afford education for their children
and redistributing resources to the children of the less well-off families to ensure that they
receive an education equal to that of children of comparatively richer parents.

We should learn to differentiate between formal equality of opportunity and

compensatory equality of opportunity. Formal equality of opportunity is essentially a
principle of non-discrimination and procedural fairness. It thus suggests recruitment
according to merit, but a distinction is made between ones natural abilities and ones
actual performance and achievement. It requires that individual performance may be a
reflection of individuals ability and effort alone and that the development of ones
capacities is not hindered by social position into which one is born. 9 Pre-existing
inequalities are not taken as given, but are viewed as obstacles for which there must be
some compensation, in order that all individuals have opportunity to demonstrate their
natural capacities and be judges on that basis.

The extent to which equality of opportunity is compensatory as opposed to formal

will depend, inpart, on its justification. We can distinguish two sorts of approaches here.
One justification for equality of opportunity wiuld be based on individual rights or moral
claims and would stress for the development of the talents and capacities of all
individuals in society. An alternative justification would be some notion of general social
interest in terms of efficient or functional allocation of individuals to social roles; in
order to maximize efficiency or productivity from the point of view of society, important
social positions ought to be filled with the most competent people.

Unfortunately, many advocates of equality do not directly address the question of the
degree to which we must go beyond formal equality of opportunity. That is, they do not
specify what is required in order to compensate individuals for initial disadvantages
associated with social class background, so as to provide everyone with genuinely fair:
chance to develop his or her talents and to attain various social positions, To the extent
that equality of opportunity is formal, and to the extent that pre-existing inequalities are

9 John Rawls. A theory of justice. Pg 65-75

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taken as given, the principle can be said to the most conservative type of equality.
Compensatory equality of opportunity, on the other hand, can have quite radical
implications, when carried to logical conclusion.

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