At first glance, equity and equality seem very similar. The reality is they're both focused on fairness and justice. But as you get a little bit deeper into their definitions, you'll find significant differences between the two.
- Equality is focused on providing the same resources and opportunities to everyone without taking into account individual differences.
- Equality is like a “one size fits all” approach.
- Equity is more focused on providing resources and opportunities based on the impact on individuals
- Equity recognizes that because of how systems have been designed and what they have been set up to do, there are situations where certain individuals are privileged to more fairness or justice than others.
- We have to talk about the individuals that are part of a system and how systems were designed to impact certain groups of individuals based on their identity, based on certain segments, and based on traits of who they are as human beings.
- We're not gonna do a “one size fits all”.
- Instead, we're gonna try to create equal outcomes by providing different resources to different individuals based on their needs and based on where the gap in the inequity is.
So what do you need to do?
You need to address the inequity before you can then say equality happens.
I always say equity first, then equality. Because if you jump immediately to equality, you think you may have solved it, but there's a root issue, a root in equity that has happened, and if you don't solve that, you actually will never reach equality.
This is why it's important to not just talk about equity and try to use equity and equality interchangeably. We've gotta know the difference. We've gotta understand that difference, and we've gotta talk about those differences in the context of larger system change.
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