- What is equality?
- Equality right
- Equality and equity
- Gender equality
- Equal opportunities
- Equal rights
- Social equality
We explain what equality is, its relationship with discrimination and equity. In addition, equal rights, gender and social.
What is equality?
The word equality means, according to the Royal Spanish Academy, the "principle that recognizes the equality of all citizens in Rights and obligations ”.
This means that before the law, all the citizens we should be equal and be measured by the same yardstick, so that we all have the same opportunities to receive rewards, or to be punished for our bad conduct. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.
Equality is the opposite of inequality, which is one of the ills that afflict the humanity since its most ancient times, in which the presence of not only poor and rich, noble and commoners, but even of slaves that were treated as merchandise.
There have always been movements and organized struggles around the conquest of equality, which, by comparison, seems much closer today than in the past. However, there are still ways to discrimination, that is, to apply criteria of legitimation or exclusion to citizens selectively, that is, in a non-egalitarian way.
There are known cases in which the rights of minorities are formally or informally limited, especially those of the economically disadvantaged, such as the migrants, the races and religions minorities, or even women, exercising the law unequally.
Multiple social collectives, civil movements and even international organizations Y non-governmental, gathered under the dream of a mute future more egalitarian, that is to say, more just.
Now, when we talk about equality, we can be talking about many forms of equality (or inequality), depending on the character on which the discrimination is based: sex, race, socioeconomic level, etc. We will explore some of them below.
Equality right
The fight for equality does not contemplate, as some people seem to believe, the idea that we should all be identical and that some individuals should be prevented from excelling on the basis of their talents or abilities. virtues, or even the inheritances of their predecessors.
On the contrary, the social struggle in this sense pursues equality before the law, that is, the right to equality: that all citizens are measured with the same, identical yardstick, regardless of who they are or from what stratum of the law. population come from.
This struggle has a distant and important antecedent. In the French Revolution of 1789 for the first time a charter of fundamental human rights was promulgated, inspiration for the subsequent Universal Declaration of the Human rights carried out by the United Nations Organization.
But despite the fact that this declaration ensures the equality of all human beings before the law, many groups need to continue fighting for their right to equality in sectors of the law. society and of the culture often unsuspected.
Be that as it may, the right to equality means that every human being has identical treatment before the law, with the same opportunities to defend himself, that he is judged according to the same interpretations of the law, fairly, without paying attention to details. that could tip the scale of the Justice in your favor, or against you.
Equality and equity
These two terms are often treated as synonyms, even if they are not really. By equality, as we have said before, we understand uniformity before the whole, that is, the application of the same measures and the same principles in the judgment of some, in the judgment of others.
Instead, equity has to do with justice, based on the recognition of inequalities that already existed beforehand, to be truly fair. This means that if equality proposes “everyone according to the same criteria”, equity proposes “to each according to their needs and to each according to their capacities”.
That is the difference between the egalitarian and the equitable: the latter implies starting from a situation of inequality, to try to correct it or at least not increase it. In that sense, equality and equity can be really complementary, since the second is a way to achieve the first.
Gender equality
Gender equality seeks the same rights for all.For gender equality It is understood that both men and women should be considered equal for the purposes of law enforcement, the allocation of rewards for work performed, or punishment for laws that have been breached. That is to say, that the law is applied equally without distinction of sex and that the rewards for the same work done are always the same.
This claim for equality between men and women arose in modern times of humanity. It is because for much of our history the woman found herself on a rung of inferiority to the man.
For example, it was considered the loot of war, was denied participation politics or even economic (democracy AthenianFor example, he did not regard them as citizens; but they also did not have the right to vote in Western democracies until practically the 20th century), and they were educated to submit to male designs.
This, thanks to the successive waves feminists, has been changing in our contemporary societies, but is still a matter of debate today.
Equal opportunities
Similarly, the idea of equal opportunities states that all human beings, regardless of their race, sex, creed or nationality, should come into the world with the same opportunities to grow, strive and receive the rewards of their effort. , thus acceding to social welfare and their full political rights.
This is an idea that is often ignored when talking about meritocracy, the supposed social and political organization in which those who accumulate the greatest merits will hold the greatest decision-making power.
The problem is that if we don't all come into the world with the same opportunities, how can we be judged equally? And in the same way, how could we judge the merit of someone who came into the world with all his needs met, and that of someone who first had to struggle to satisfy himself?
In many cases, the Condition exists as a guarantor of equal opportunities, which is why it controls the education public, the public health and other benefits to which the descendants of the lessons disadvantaged would not be able to enter, not for lack of merit, but for other reasons.
Equal rights
The equal rights it is, more or less, the same as the right to equality, only seen from a legal perspective. Equal rights are the foundation of any system worthy of justice: all citizens of a State are equal before the law.
Citizens submit to the law voluntarily and absolutely, because they trust that legal institutions exercise it without distinction, which is why it is often said that "justice is blind."
Social equality
Finally, the social equality It is the condition of total equity among the citizens of a State, in which they enjoy full satisfaction of their civil, legal, economic and political rights (their fundamental human rights) as equals. That is, social equality is equivalent to the sum of equality before the law, equal opportunities and equal results (punishments and rewards).
Social equality is obviously the opposite of Social inequality, which takes place when the criteria of socialization in a community are exercised in a discriminatory way: attending to race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, language or any other condition that serves to deny the just reward, the deserved service or, even worse, the minimum rights.